


The Trick to This

by hotot



Series: Double Bind [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canadian Annexation, Canadian Sole Survivor, Chubby Sole Survivor, Companionable Snark, Cupcakes and Trauma, Demisexuality, Developing Relationship, Did I Mention Angst?, Eventual Kink, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Family, Fat Character, Frenemies, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Imprisonment, Medical Procedures, Mental Health Issues, Mindfuck, Nonbinary Character, Not Canon Compliant, Novelization, Other, POV Alternating, PTSD, Plot Twists, Queer Themes, Sad with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents, Spoilers, Stalking, Trans Deacon, Trans Male Character, not all sex is healing sex, there's angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:12:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 185,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8930290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotot/pseuds/hotot
Summary: "That’s all memoires were. Lies. Lies and stories."~~~Deacon has a few tricks for navigating the Railroad: don't trust everyone, don't have expectations, don't die...and definitely don't get attached. As for the pre-war popsicle? Identity crisis aside, she's always been a fixer, but dispite knowing the ins and outs of organizations like the Railroad, she finds more than a few surprises on the other side of armageddon. And super mutants, synths, and a spy with an unfortunate lying habit really are the least of it.  Slow burn: one-sided stalker, to friends, to lovers. That sounded bad, but it's the...good kind of stalking? Deacon is non binary and trans. Sole Survivor is complicated and Quebecois. Mindfuckery, identity issues, and canon divergent plot twists ahead. See author's notes.





	1. Something Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Fallout 4 has resumed ruining my life, and I'm in Deacon hell. This ship is my ride or die. I took the title from that first bit of Deacon banter that made me fall in love with him. DON'T DIE ahaha. *dies anyway*
> 
>  **Author's Notes blahblah I share a lot of meta (updated 12/30):**  
>  **Slow update warning:** Life is busy (but good!) and the chapters aren't happening as quickly as I'd like. Aiming for monthly, could be a bit more.
> 
> \- Deacon is transmasculine and non-binary. He's had top surgery, uses hormones. He has minimal body dysphoria but sometimes social dysphoria around feeling too masculine or too feminine. He uses dick, cock, and cunt to refer to his genitals. Stating this mostly as a courtesy to my fellow trans and NB readers. Also note that Deacon _being_ trans is not the focus of this fic. You're not going to find a coming out story, or anything about his transition except in scattered bits and pieces. Concrit welcome but I'm a delicate fucking flower working through my own gender shit, so be kind. 
> 
> -There will be some stripe of polyamory later on. Glory & Deacon tag denotes a significant platonic relationship. 
> 
> -Heavy on the angst. Attempts at humor. Super sweet and precious friends to lovers. Novelization with canon divergence. Serious and heart-wrenching plot twists later in the fic, be warned! 
> 
> THANK YOU all so much... I treasure every single bit of feedback I get and really love to hear from readers. It's why I do this. So much love.  
>  **Fic related art:**  
>  -[Vectober (nsfw blog)](http://vectober.tumblr.com/) Commission [[X](https://probably-a-synth.tumblr.com/image/158553428880)]  
> -[Mitzyblue's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MitzyBlue) amazing fanart for Chapter 7. [[X](http://i.imgur.com/sAuxfcB.jpg)]  
> -hoxadrine-art's amazing fanart. [[x](https://hoxadrine-art.tumblr.com/post/159330839466/the-fastest-sketch-lazy-painting-i-did-so-far)][[x](http://ladygemini.tumblr.com/post/155744360008/bunfork-s-hot-n-badass-fixer-i-just-made-today)]
> 
> These artists and writers made fanart of this story and I honestly can't even? Sometimes I just stare at it. Check out their profiles above and shower them with love. <3

Deacon 

A Tourist in cell 1Ab called for a pickup, and Dez said go to the dead drop in Concord, so Deacon went to the dead drop in Concord.

When Deacon reached into the garbage bin, he expected to find a slip of paper with some innocuous open speak scrawled on it, something like “manufacturer activity” or “shipment intercept,” but instead he got cipher.

W 6 V 1 3 B 7 A J 2 U 1 A Z I L 8 2 T C 9 0 W 1 P 1 1 F E R P 1 A X

So it was _that_ tourist.

Silly him for having expectations.

Deacon’s eyes narrowed as he let his sunglasses slip down the bridge of his nose, taking a moment to read only every third and fifth letter of the ciphertext.

VAULT111

Deacon tore the little paper into scraps and tossed them in the air.

So, something was rotten in the state of Vault 111.

“Yaaay,” he said aloud, letting the pieces drift like sad confetti, even giving his fingers a jazzy little wiggle for good measure. “This’ll be fuuun.”

Pre-war mysteries like 111 probably weren't what Dez had in mind for her top snoop, but the 1Ab Tourist knew their job. They wouldn’t have put intel in a dead drop unless there had been some sort of Institute activity, or a change in the status of one their safe routes or safehouses, or intel on a new synth in need of extraction... or a Courser sighting, or _something_ the Railroad might be interested in _,_ right?

Right.

Not that Deacon would even tell Dez and Carrington the truth of what the Tourist had left in the dead drop unless it became somehow relevant to HQ. He was all intel, but that meant keeping things to himself as much as it meant sharing anything.

Compartmentalization was the name of the game. Dez and Carrington knew that well.

Leaving the main road, he ducked behind a dumpster and made a quick change from road leathers to his scavver best: drab brown plaid and not one but _two_ pairs of pants, so ragged that they really amounted to about one pair’s worth of material. He adjusted his dick, made sure it wouldn't drift to an awkward spot down his leg or up his pelvis. Another slight adjustment to his pompadour wig and a slight twitch to straighten his glasses and he felt like the perfectly dirty, nasty scavver and set off north towards the Red Rocket.

Deacon avoided the broken bridge that lead into the burnt-out husk of a cul-du-sac town, scouting through the thin forest around Sanctuary instead. He made it across the little river as the sun started to saturate the landscape in evening color, light diffuse and hanging in shrouds of orange-tinged fog. The landscape was pretty this far north, away from the coast and the ruins of Boston proper. No ferals, or raiders, or mirelurks here, for which Deacon was entirely thankful. On the list of all the things in the Commonwealth that could kill him, raiders, mirelurks, and radiation were his least favorite. Mirelurks were fucking impossible to kill, and radiation was an absolute bastard, but in the end it was the raiders he loathed the most. Mirelurks and rads just did what mirelurks and rads were supposed to do according to their natures. Raiders? Raiders were people, just like Deacon was a person. And _people_ made _choices_.

The town was completely abandoned, save for a few radroaches which he took care not to disturb. He wandered around a bit, soft footed, keeping his mind empty of assumptions and his senses sharp for any indication of higher lifesigns. Nothing so much as twitched, and it made Deacon twitchy.

During his tour of the neighborhood, one house drew him in. Trimmed bushes lined a swept driveway, the rusted walls somehow less rusty than the surrounding structures, the fenced in yard-- white picket, of course-- in somewhat better repair than any of the other fenced in yards.

This place could have been featured on an old world postcard.

He pushed the front door open, wincing at the rust-caked creek of the hinges, and found a decaying time capsule of a pre-war home. Suburban bliss in 1000 square feet.

Postcard status confirmed.

He did a circuit of the rooms, and something blue caught his eye. Someone had tossed… thrown? _hurled_?? a vault suit into a corner of the room full of a crib and kids toys.

He picked up the suit and checked it over. It was in perfect condition. The number 111 blazed in yellow across the back. Deacon ran the garment through his hands. The material was flexible, forgiving, and stretchy like any vault suit would be, but it was different than the one he’d borrowed without asking from Vault 83, the one that sat at the bottom of his pack now. This one seemed to have a sort of filament woven into it that his liberated suit lacked.

He brought the neck of the garment to his nose and gave it a tentative sniff.

It didn’t smell. Or rather, it didn’t smell like Commonwealth, and Deacon knew immediately that wasn’t some spare suit that had been sitting around the half-preserved house for any length of time, from months to 210 years. _Anything_ exposed to the elements for more than a few months took on the peculiar smell of sweet dust and ozone and petrichor. Not a horrible smell; to Deacon it was as mild and as much a part of his reality as breathing was to his continued existence.

You didn’t notice the Commonwealth’s smell until someone pointed it out, and yet... the vault suit didn’t have even a hint of it.

The way it _actually_ smelled was totally new to him. It smelled clean, first of all, maybe with the barest hint of human sweat. It certainly wasn’t lived in. There was also a hint of chemical treatment, with a faint, separate note of something earthy and floral that he simply could not place. No hubflower ever smelled so gently sweet.

He carefully teased out one of the wire-thin filaments woven into the cuff of the suit and tucked the little strand in a fold of paper before tossing the garment back where he found it. It looked bright and out of place in the dingy room, with the busted, dusty crib and the crooked little mobile of red rockets.

Looking around the room, Deacon noticed a little green holotape on the baby changing table, labeled "Hi Honey!" in a bold and messy hand. His sticky fingers burned to take it, pop it into the pip-boy riding at the bottom of his pack, but he couldn't risk the noise of playback. The tape wasn't dusty like the rest of the table, and he picked it up carefully to find that the little area under tape was as grime coated as everything else, and not a little dust free square. Someone had placed it here, and recently. As recently as the vault suit? 

He put the holotape back exactly as he found it.

Deacon swept the rest of the house. Only the Vault Suit ended up being interesting. Still, he found an old school diploma-- Master’s in Journalism from Boston University awarded to one Nate Deckard in 2070. He also found an open safe in the other bedroom, the one with the big bed. Inside was some pre-war cash, a medkit, an old army hat, and a flag in a damaged case, display glass shattered, the red material faded to pink, the white discolored to an unhealthy yellow. It wasn't a flag with stars and stripes on it, not a flag from the Commonwealth. Everything else in the house _definitely_ smelled like Commonwealth, Deacon confirmed, giving the flag a tentative sniff and wrinkling his nose.

Deacon slipped out the back door and into the yard, but stopped dead when he heard a low burst of pressurized gas and saw a bright jet of flame, making the evening air ripple with heat and light.

A Mr. Handy floated between him and escape.

“I say! What do you think you’re doing here?”

Deacon bit his cheek to stop himself from imitating the robot’s accent, even as the Mr. Handy descended upon him. Deacon’s eyes darted to a gap in the fence and he backed up a step.

“Uh. Looking for junk, and stuff.” Deacon held up his hands to prove his innocence, taking another step towards the gap. “I’m just looking for copper. You wouldn’t _believe_ what it’s selling for right now.”

“Looking for copper? In Miss... Oh, bother. _Miss Jeanne's_ house?”

Deacon kept his mouth slack, but the corner of his eyes creased behind his sunglasses. He always got a kick out of self-righteous robots.

The Mr. Handy seemed to swell as it was if taking a deep, indignant breath. “Get out! Loot anywhere else you must, but leave this house alone! As if I didn’t endure 200 years of raiders and scavengers and solitude, hoping for this day to come and now _you._ I do say, Miss… Miss Jeanne has only just returned and I will not tolerate any more violations of her life or her property.” It paused, as if catching its breath. If the robot had eyes, they would have been bulging.

“Now… _leave._ ” The Mr. Handy raised its saw blade attachment and buzzed the weapon like it was revving an engine.

Deacon fled, scavver’s tail between his legs, the Mr. Handy shouting at him until he made it across the bridge. Only then did it fall away and float back to the town.

Once the robot was out of sight, Deacon cut into the forest and promptly doubled back across the river, taking the long way around. The sky grew darker by degrees as he hiked up the hill that culminated in Vault 111.

Deacon set his pack on the ground and dug out out the pip-boy from his pack, the one he’d borrowed without asking from Vault 81. He’d taken it last time he’d done trading there, back when he’d hear rumors of Institute activity around Vault 111, nearly six months ago. He’d tried to get into Vaut 111 himself after acquiring the computer, but the Vault was locked up tight from the inside. Now it belonged to the Railroad, but he'd borrowed it from Tinker Tom, again without asking. 

The key plugin hadn't worked before. Now, though… if someone had come _out_ of the vault? He plugged the pip-boy key into the control and...

_Perfecto._

The platform gave a hearty groan and descended, bringing Deacon with it, armed with his laser pistol and zero expectations. It was a strict policy definitely extended to this Vault, as much as his imagination strained to fill in the gaps of what he had learned so far.

That was the thing about gathering intel: you _couldn’t_ have expectations. Expectations clouded your judgement, made you hear and see what you wanted instead of what was. Facts were facts, and feeling were feelings, and nary the twain would meet. Deacon always struggled to reign in his imagination and invested deeply in instincts, both of which told him to expect something _dramatic_ , even as he kept his mind clear so he could get the _facts_.

But still. It would have made a better story if he’d been promptly eaten by some eldritch horror seething down in the belly of the vault.

Or maybe…! Maybe it should have been a bunch of well adjusted vaulties in a parade of blue suits, a study in horrified expressions as they got their first glimpse at the brave new irradiated world, and then promptly retreated back into the safety of the underground and their sociological micro-experiments, as dolls, or puppets, or masters, or all of the above.

Vault-Tec was creepy like that.

When he found the first skeleton, Deacon thought that even an Institut agent, or a Courser, or _something_ that might try to blow his brains out for snooping would have been more welcome than the frozen tomb he got instead.

Vault 111 was a cryogenic stasis facility with a bunch of dead people in Vault suits. That, at least, solved the mystery of the abandoned Sanctuary suit’s chemical smell. The whole facility reeked with the oddly metallic scent that had clung to the garment. An angry, wet chill permeated the echoing, pipe-like hallways, making the whole place slick and dripping. This was not a place where people had lived. Just… slept. Like… human popsicles. And then.. Died. Asphyxiated. Helpless, melting away as life support failed and the doors failed to unlock. Thin sheets of frost encased their bodies, making it hard to see features. The all died in contorted poses, like they were trying to crawl out of their own skins.

What a waste.

There were thirteen citizen names on the Vault-Tec roster, but only eleven dead bodies.

A pod belonging to one Sophie Deckard was the only one that had been manually overridden. The command came from the outside. The pods had no internal release. Someone _else_ had control of them.

_The Institute_ , his gut said. Or maybe that gnawing feeling was just hunger.

“Shut up, gut,” he said, strolling over to examine the two people who shared a last name with the missing vaultie.

Turned out there was only one body. Nate Deckard had a bullet in his head, and Shaun Deckard was not in the stasis chamber like the records indicated.

It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. Deacon thought of the empty crib down in Sanctuary and lit a cigarette.

It went like this: Sophie Deckard woke up, killed everyone else in the vault, shot her husband, took her kid, went home, took off her vault suit and threw it in the corner, met her robot and then immediately took off into the unknown, and was currently at large in the Commonwealth, possibly even now lying naked in a ditch, because…

Or maybe it went like this: Sophie Deckard woke up, found her husband shot in the head and the popsicles asphyxiated (remote command or system malfunction), she took her son, went home, took off her vault suit and threw it in the corner, met her robot and… or...

Or… like this: Sophie Deckard woke up, found her husband shot in the head, the popsicles asphyxiated, her son dead, and she went to go bury him…

He would have to go look for a grave.

Deacon exhaled in a puff annoyance, smoke lingering heavy in the humid air which hadn't touched breathing lungs in 210 years. Well, he supposed Sophie Deckard had just breathed this same air less than 24 hours ago, along with Shaun and whoever shot Nate Deckard.

She was _pre-war._ Alive and kicking. Or at least… alive, dragged kicking and screaming 200 years into the future. Probably doing more screaming than kicking, at the moment, actually.

He wondered if she was actually still breathing.

He took another drag, squinting into the frosted glass which stood between him and the man with the extra hole in his head. Nate Deckard had a nice face. Quite handsome, in a soft way. Clean, honest. He’d been a journalist. He had the face of a man who could have happily lived down in that little house in Sanctuary. Deacon wondered if Sophie Deckard had been happy there.

“So, who shot Nate Deckard?” He said, and his voice bounced back to him like someone else had asked the question.

_The Institute,_ his gut rumbled at him.

He stood there, smoking and looking at Nate for what felt like a long time. The entry wound looked neat, with hardly more than a trickle of frozen blood dripping down Nate’s temple, but the ballistic looked like something bigger than 10mm bullet. Even if Deacon had a stomach for at the gorey, corpsey stuff like Carrington did, it would have been impossible to tell how old the wound was. Too bad cryogenic stasis worked just as well on corpses as it did on living bodies, or Nate Deckard would have told Deacon a lot more than “ _I was shot, some time, by someone, in the last 210 years._ ”

Time. Sophie Deckard had probably lost a lot of it. And today, of all days...

And who the hell was _Miss Jeanne_?

Deacon snuffed out his smoke and shoved the butt in his pocket. 

Back on the surface the night looked clear, stars winking down at him like they knew the answers to the questions boiling in his mind.

“Cheeky,” he muttered to the sky, and winked back. He set up camp at the little observation post the Tourist had built. Deacon found the little tin of white paint he always kept in his bag, and got to work, adding a new decoration to the stand. When he was done, he sat back to watch the paint dry.

_Railsign: Ally_.

He didn’t _literally_ watch the paint dry of course. He had something just as boring to do. Wait. His foot tapped on the boards, fingers drumming on his knee, keeping alert for movement in the little town below. He chewed on some brahmin jerky, and cleaned his nails. He yawned a lot. Took a leak, squatting in a bush downhill and downwind from the observation post.

If nothing moved down in Sanctuary by morning, he’d try and pick up her trail. No doubt if Sophie Deckard found a friendly, they would point her to Diamond City. And if she found a not-so-friendly? They’d definitely be pointing guns.

Hell, even friendlies pointed guns most of the time. Maybe he should go after her now… but that robot… he was waiting for her to come back. Could be delusional. After 200 years...

And then there was the thing. The big, important thing he’d been skirting around while he gathered all the intel, because he didn’t want the thing to mean anything without actual proof, because he wasn’t going to find any damn proof.

The thing that was today’s date.

October 23rd 2287. 210 years to the day since the bombs fell. That was not a coincidence. As far as Deacon was concerned, nothing to do with Vault-Tec was an coincidence.

Deacon let the intel from Vault 111 bounce around his head with all the enthusiasm of a deflated kickball, minutes stretching into hours, each theory more wild and also somehow more half hearted than the last. He was about to call it a night when he saw the bounce and flash of a light on the road from Concord. From his position on the hill he could see all the way to the Rocket, and something was heading this way.

He was up and out of the chair in seconds, stealth boy bouncing at his hip and binoculars in his hand, crouching low as he crept down the hill and back to Sanctuary.

Someone came pounding up the main street in a suit of power armor, toting a minigun, a huge dog bounding along in the armor’s wake. The headlamp on the power armor pooled in a yellow flood on the broken pavement as the operator came to a halt. The armor beeped, and Deacon squinted to make out the figure that… fell bodily backwards, landing hard on the pavement.

They didn’t move.

Deacon waited in his hiding spot under a bush, holding his breath, sunglasses traded for the press of binoculars against his eyes. The dog barked, sniffing the body. Then it laid down beside the figure that looked so small in the shadow of the power armor looming above, and whined.

Nothing continued to happen.

Where was that damn Mr. Handy, anyway? Not so handy now, was it?

_Shut up, D._

He was about to pop his stealth boy and go check for a pulse when he heard a gasp, and the body gave a mighty twitch, almost a convulsion. He heard coughing, and then the little figure struggled upright as if trying to escape from the viscous, clinging shadows pooling around the edges of the spotlight. The figure crawled into light on all fours, and he got a first look.

A woman. She was small, with a figure full enough that it made Deacon raise an eyebrow. Not that curves or a bit of extra fat was _unheard_ of in the Commonwealth. No, it was something else besides the curves. She just looked… well… _well_. Not malnourished, like most of the rest of the folks in the Commonwealth. She looked like a vaultie, or some gal from those pre-war mags. Except shorter, and curvier, and... you know, covered in blood.

She moved mechanically, dumped the contents of a bag on the broken pavement and sorted through a random assortment of crap, coming up with a few stimpaks and a carton of purified water.

This _had_ to be Sophie Deckard. She didn’t need a vault suit to clue him in. She wore what looked like an old military uniform, soiled with grime and blood, but she was otherwise just too clean. Well, clean except that her chin-length hair was matted with blood and stuck to one side of her face. She tilted her head to the side and Deacon swallowed a hiss of sympathy as he watched her pour water down her temple, pushing back her hair to reveal what looked like an angry, jagged cut that ran from temple to jaw, just shy of her ear and hairline.

Yeah, that didn’t look good, even from this far away. His stomach writhed, squeamish as hell.

Her automatic movements continued, jerky but sure. She stabbed herself in the neck with a stimpak and then fell back against the power armor. She didn’t move for so long Deacon started to worry again, then she jerked, like she was crawling her way from sleep.

“Codsworth?” She called. Her voice was weak, hoarse. She tried again. “Codsworth!” The dog starting barking.

“Mum? I hear a dog. Is that y-- oh… Mum! Miss... Miss Jeanne! What’s happened to you?”

Miss Jean, huh? So, this _wasn’t_ Sophie Deckard. Or Jeanne _was_ Sophie Deckard, or… this was just some rando and he’d lost the vaultie in his gamble to stick around.

A bark made him jump out of his skin and drop the binoculars. Damn things, making him farsighted. It was why he’d never be a sniper-- a scope made sure you couldn’t see anything between your and the target. Tunnel vision, like expectations, could get a spy killed.

The dog gave a quite boof, and sniffed his wig as he lay very still. “Easy buddy,” he said, words hardly louder than a thought. “Friend.” He slowly reached into his pocket for the brahmin jerky he’d been gnawing on earlier. “See… friend.”

The dog snapped up the treat and then sat down by the bush, wagging his tail.

_Go… go away you fuzzy bastard._

Deacon lay there, listening to the pounding of his heart.

“What is it, Dogmeat?” The woman tottered over to her dog. She had a limp, face tight with pain, and he got a better look at her from between branches, trying to pick out her strongest features before she got too close, so he could recognize her later. She was a quick study. White, oval face, strong jaw, stubborn chin. A wide, serious pout on thick lips, eyes in shadow. Deacon held his breath and popped the button on his stealth boy, and vanished. 

Another few unsteady steps and soon all he could see of her were a pair of leather combat boots, the leather cracked and flaking, and the crease of her uniform pants, close enough that he could grab her ankle. She stared directly at him for a moment, and a thrill coursed along his spine. Her eyes drifted past him, sweeping the perimeter, looking for whatever Dogmeat had found, and found nothing.

Twenty seconds left. 

The dog huffed, his tail wagging inches from Deacon’s face, and shoved a wet nose into the woman’s hand.

“Miss Jeanne, come along. I will find something for you to sew up your head with.” The robot drifted closer, and Deacon _so_ wanted to try out that accent. It was old world, old... across the ocean world. English or something. _Nobody_ talked like that. 

Fifteen seconds.

“Not to the old house, Codsworth.” She had a faint accent to her tired voice. “I… can’t be in there. Not tonight.”

The trembling note in her voice struck a chord in him, a minor one.

Jeanne limped away, the dog bounding along with another happy wag of his tail, and Deacon exhaled, and counted down. Ten seconds, five seconds.... two seconds, and he rippled back into existence. 

That’s when new voices filtered up the road. Deacon shifted under his bush to ease a sudden cramp, listening to chatter as the group started a campfire by the house where Jeanne had gone to clean herself up-- not the neat house with the Vault suit, but another one not nearly as well kept.

The chatter of the newcomers was almost manic in it’s euphoria and relief. _Raiders, deathclaw_. _Hell of a fight. Hell of a thing she did for us._ They talked like people shocked and delighted to find themselves not dead. Someone bemoaned the damage to such “cherry” power armor. Deacon made a silent gagging face. Atom Cat dropout? A woman bitched about the sorry state of the houses. Someone-- Deacon figured he was the leader, said they were home, that Sanctuary would be the place to start rebuilding. Rebuilding the Minutemen.

Interesting. There _had_ been rumors that some survived the Quincy massacre.

_Another waste, that massacre._

Deacon was getting lost in the weeds, and playing it _way_ too close. Stupid, lurking around when there was dog, nice as the pooch has been to not blow his cover. Nice, or damn lucky? And Dez would kill him if she knew he actually spend most of his time like this, lying on his back under bushes or squatting behind dumpsters, eavesdropping on random shit that was irrelevant to freeing synths and taking out the Institute. Still, it was his job to know things, and he now knew that Sophie Deckard had come out of Vault 111, and this Miss Jeanne had returned to Sanctuary with the last of the Minutemen in tow, and referred to the Deckard’s house as her own, just like the Mr. Handy had a few hours ago.

Deacon had seen more than enough for now. His stealth boy was dead, but he didn't need to be invisible to slip back up the hill without being seen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's the first chapter! Deacon is a sassy one, even when he's just talking to himself. It'll be POV alternating, sometimes within chapters. I know starting at the begining of the game isn't as exciting as in media res but... I just... keep coming back to the adjustments someone like Jeanne is going to have to make in order to survive the Commonwealth. 
> 
> Feed a writer's soul with kudos and comments. Feedback is always welcome and 100% appreciated, anything from a simple *thumbs up* to concrit, or even incoherent babbling or memes or whatever. Thanks for reading!


	2. Something True

**Jeanne**

The collar of the blue catsuit squeezed her neck like ham-handed fists. Her atrophied mind and body begged for room to breathe, but the suit squeezed her windpipe, trying to drag her back down into the dark confines of an ice-frosted casket.

After two centuries underground, asleep in the endless cold, she needed a little space.

The man who shot Nate and ripped Shaun from his arms had called her “the backup.” What did that make Shaun?

_Oh… Shaun._

She unhitched the clasps on her pip-boy and jerked it from her wrist, tossing the computer aside less gently than she should have. She attacked the zipper of her suit and ripped the blue, clinging thing from her shoulders, hauled it over her hips in a tangle of cloth and limbs. Her body and mind howled with grief.

And Nate. _Not Nate. Not right now, Nate._

And Xavier. A friend, a better friend than she'd had in her life. Someone who _knew._ What it had been like, in the hell country of Norther Alberta, pushing back against American incursion. The brutality of it. The truama. Xavier... Sweet and lost and suffering. She'd hoped for him, that he'd find some peace, if only he could get out of Sanctuary. Away from  _Nora._ The bitch. A sociopath if she'd ever met one. All gone. At that thought, rage tore through her. All these lives blasted away. And somehow, she was still here. For some  _fucking_ reason...

She tore off her boots, kicked her legs free of the suit and snarled, flinging it as hard as she could across the room. It flapped like a wetsuit and crumpled in the corner. She crawled over to the pretty blue crib and clung to the bars while the broken red rocket mobile spun in a sad, half crazed circle. She took a few shuddering breaths, and stared into the depths of the crib.

If she willed reality hard enough, for long enough, Shaun would be there, swaddled and fussing, keeping his exhausted parents awake, mumbling to each other: “your turn,” or “I’ve got it tonight, honey. Sleep.”

And then somehow …. she'd slept for 210 years. A baby’s cries could keep her up all night but she managed to sleep through the end of the world, and survive it. What did that say about her?

She used to think having a baby would ruin her life. Children were not for people like her.

And then Nate… and then the pregnancy test, pissing on the stick and crying over the sink in the squat she tried not to call home, showing Nate the little pink plus signs, absolutely terrified of bringing a child into a world full of but poverty and violence and destruction. She’d had more right to be afraid than she knew. But Nate promised. He _promised._ Together, he said. The three of them, he said.

But he wasn’t here now.

Without Shaun, Nate would not have married her, secured her American citizenship. Without her boys she would have been one more Toronto Uprising casualty gone undocumented, her blood and brains sprayed across the wall of some east-side safehouse, when the American MPs finally broke down the door.

Without Shaun, alive and beautiful and fussing as Codsworth tried to tend to him, she wouldn’t have signed those Vault-Tec papers—two-hundred and ten years ago—scoring that lucky spot in Vault 111. She should have followed her instincts and said no, turned the salesman away, but Nate _insisted_. If she’d followed her instincts maybe they wouldn’t have run to the vault when the bombs started to fall. Maybe she and Nate would have wrapped their arms around each other, Shaun pressed between them, and she would have turned towards the light of nuclear holocaust and the three of them would have died together, like they should have.

But she and Nate were selfish. They wanted Shaun to _live._

And Shaun had saved her life twice now.

She shivered at the cold that seeped deep into her bones and sent goosebumps erupting over her bare skin. Her eyes couldn’t focus; they stared into nothing. A wild sob rose in her chest, and she clapped a shaking hand over her mouth to stifle the broken noise that ripped from her. Her eyelids trembled, making the room shudder and pitch as the corners of her vision darkened and the moldering remains of Shaun’s room telescoped into a distant pinprick of light until she stared down a long tunnel to the other side. The air was unbreathable here on the wrong end of the telescope, overwarm and burning her nose, and she couldn't breathe … she couldn’t—

“Miss Sophie?” A voice called out. The room snapped back from the darkness in a rush, like someone had pulled a brittle rubber band until it snapped. The crushing vacuum of her lungs filled with stale air again, so sharp she sputtered. She turned to fix a wavering stare on the Mr. Handy who hovered in the doorway. That name...  _Sophie._ Not her name.

Codsworth. Last surviving member of her family. She had never been able to treat him as a robot servant, even in ‘77. Nate had always been kind to him, but he still had an unconscious air of entitlement born from growing up rich.

“There you are! It’s been hours and...Oh! Your clothes!” He hovered in the doorway, articulated limbs vacillating between reaching out to her and pulling in on himself. “Shall I find you something else to wear? I dare say you’d want a bit of change after 210 years.”

She looked down at her bare stomach, covered in the zigzag stretch marks from her recent pregnancy. She traced pale, indented scars across the slight, soft curve belly, a map of lines leading her to Shaun… all dimpled cheeks and full head of downy black hair, too soft to be real. Her fingers dug into her belly for a moment.

The silence stretched on, punctuated by the soft whirr and grind of Codsworth’s motors.

“Miss Sophie?” He spoke as if he hovered beside a deathbed, all muffled velvet and gloom, incense burning to cover the _smell_ of the end of the world, a peculiar tang of ionized air and radiation, like dust after rain, and something that smelled faintly like a hot dumpster fire.

Despite his lack of lungs, Codsworth managed to sound breathless. Part of his programing, perhaps: emotional responses in service oriented artificial intelligence put humans at ease. “Are you—”

She managed a ragged breath. “Don’t call me Sophie, please. I’m not— ”

“Are you—You must remember? You are Sophie… Mrs. Sophie Deckard. It’s been 210 years but I think I should know my own mistress.” His voice trailed off, three metal arms curling in and flexing as if he wanted to wring hands he didn’t possess.

“Codsworth. I was...” She was...what? All she could focus on was what she _wasn’t_. She wasn’t Sophie. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t... going to be okay. She wasn’t going to be okay.

 She needed to focus on true things, basic things. Things that weren’t utterly unfathomable, like Nate with a bullet in his brain. Or Shaun, stolen by people in cleanroom suits and a man with a scar across his face. The man who'd put a bullet in her husband's brian. That's always how she thought she'd die. Not Nate... Should have been her.

_Start with true things._

She thought of the questions she had asked to others, hundreds of times before, on battlefields and in tent hospitals, to soldiers with head injuries, or after a psychotic break, to assess their memories, their mental faculties, to see if they were ready to get packed back into the vertibirds and shipped to the front lines again. Meat for the meat grinder, so long as it was _sane_ meat.

The difference now was that only she could verify her own sanity, which rendered the verification nothing more than a closed feedback loop.

She tried anyway. It was the only tool she had, sitting in her underwear on the floor of her missing son’s room in her dead husband’s house, getting called the wrong name by her robot butler. She stifled a manic giggle, and curled a hand around one of the bars.

Start with true things.

“I was born January 4th, 2045, in Sherbrooke, Quebec. To ” Her voice droned, buzzing in her own ears, but somehow the words filled the massive, hollow space in her gut with something heavy and grounding. She huffed a little laugh, this one more sane-sounding, and pressed her cheek into one of the cold bars on the crib. “My parents named me Jeanne. They used to call me Jeannie.” She let her mild, French accent tumble from her lips for the first time in two years, filling the space with things real to her _,_ not the cultured American accent she’d practiced until it was almost true. She fell back into the but the easy, comfortable Quebecois drawl, her upper lip curling. “Jeannie,” she said again, pronouncing the nickname properly: _jha-neeh_ instead of _gee-nee._

Nate could never say her name with a proper French accent. _Je-yun. Geee-ne? Jen._

_No, Nate, you have to set your jaw forward on the e. Like this. Jeanne._

_Her name rolled from her mouth like a cloud. Her name dropped from his mouth like a brick wall. He turned red, laughing at himself as he tried to emulate her Quebecois accent in English, stymied by his thick Boston twang. He did get better at it after a few weeks of practice. Pillow-talk with a french girlfriend had that effect on people._

Nate’s smile lit her soul with sunlight. His laugh, his brilliance and compassion filled her up so much she felt guilty for being so empty before. There wasn’t enough time in the world for him; two short years was not enough to love him as much as she’d wanted to love, or as much as he deserved it. She closed her eyes against the ham-handed fists at her throat.

 _Real things. True things._ It hurt, but she took a breath.

“I am 32 years old.”

What else was true? Verifiable. Stamped on legal documents, even if they were _fake_ legal documents. She needed… Shaun.

 _Nate_.

“I met Nate Deckard in 2076, in Toronto. We conceived that summer. An accident.” That was subjective. She called it a happy accident, in the end. Subjective. They wanted a family. Subjective. Without Nate and Shaun, she would have died. Subjective.

She needed real things right now, times, dates, numbers. “Shaun was born at 11:12 am, April 10th, 2077, at Kendal Hospital. In Boston. In America.”

Codsworth drifted closer to hovered next to her, a round expanse of metal, looking as concerned as a Mr. Handy could look. To her he looked solid and real. His three articulated limbs wavered like he wanted to reach out, find a way to comfort her beyond the capacity of his metal body and his programming.

She let go of the crib and slowly lowered her hand to lay it across the gentle slope of his chassis. Was he real? The cool metal made her jerk her hand back. Reminded her of the vault. So cold...

“Mum?” He said, in a modulation she had never heard before, low and almost breaking with feeling. Perhaps two-hundred years of isolation and tireless service had allowed for him to evolve down in those circuits, enough to truly empathize.

“Codsworth,” she said, something breaking in her chest. Her fingers felt electric against the cool metal, sending signals to her brain that she was alive, and this was real, and _someone_ here knew her.

“Your name was never Sophie?” The modulation grew tighter, making his voice sound small and defeated.

“Not until I moved to America.” She pulled herself up, using his chassis and the crib to steady herself. Her fingers trailed off of the Mr. Handy’s round body until she stood on her own, and she shivered. The muggy air clung to her sweat-damp skin, a pervasive, bone deep chill she couldn’t shake. Her eyes flickered to the vault suit in the corner, the blue so bright it looked obscene against the decaying walls.

“I’m going to find Shaun. I’m going to find the people who did this. But—I can’t be Sophie. That was never me. Please,” she said. “You have to call me Jeanne.”

Codsworth bobbed a bit, retreating back toward the door. “Jeanne it is then, mum,” he said in that efficient way that meant he would obey. He even said it properly. The slightest stirring of gratitude flickered in chest, but she shied away from it, from his acceptance and understanding. She had no room for sentiment. That would come later, once she had Shaun back in her arms, all fussing and colic, or laughing and dimpled, however she would find him. She’d take him back, no matter what the world had done to him.

_Oh, crisse...how would she find him?_

Jeanne swallowed hard and shivered again, clutching her arms around herself. She unfit in so many ways to face whatever unknown horrors awaited her outside of Shaun’s room… not to mention the gut rending grief that lurked within.

“Codsworth, could you find me some clothes, please?”

“Of course Miss Jeanne. I’ll bring you the items I’ve collected over the years, and the uniform. You’ll be needing underthings as well.” He said it without a hint of irony or embarrassment. Nate insisted that they remove his modesty protocol so they could walk around the house in various states of undress without the robot having a meltdown.

She appreciated Nate’s foresight.

Codsworth bobbed for a moment, hesitating. “I’ve been keeping this, Mum…” He struggled to say her name for a moment. “Jeanne. Oh, forgive me, I must re-write my ownership protocols, it is most difficult.”

Jeanne shook her head. “I don’t own you Codsworth. You’re family.” Codsworth went completely still, suspended in the doorway. Then he reached out with one trisected arm, and offered her a holotape she hadn’t noticed in his gripping attachment.

“From Nate,” he said. “He recorded it the day ... before. He was so … _proud_ of you, Miss Jeanne. For what a wonderful mother you are. I’ve kept it all these years. Please, take it.”

Codsworth dropped the tape into her numb fingers and drifted from the room. For a while Jeanne stood there, swaying, clutching the tape. The pip-boy lay there where she’d tossed it aside, inviting her, daring her to listen.

“Not now, Nate,” she whispered, and dropped the recording onto the changing table.

~~~

The last monster snarled, and charged at Jeanne in a flurry of flailing arms. Revulsion shuddered through her but she dropped it into the pit of her stomach, weighing her down like a stone so she could hold her position on one knee, not giving quarter. But the feral closed too fast for her long range weapon, and her geiger counter clicked its sudden warning. The shot went wide, the kickback rattled her teeth and sent a tingle up her arm all the way to her elbow. The crazed, irradiated human lunged at her a second later, trying to gouge her flesh with sharp nails and rotted teeth. She heard Dogmeat bark, but she raised the butt of her rifle and bashed feral’s knee. It fell, and she reloaded as she backed away and tapped the trigger, firing from her hip. The shot blew the creature’s skull open like a melon. It died with a gurgle and lay still in a mess of soughing skin and decaying gingham-print rags.

It took a moment _—okay, several moments_ —for the rolling shivers of revulsion to stop. When they did, she looked up and whistled, fingers pinched between her lips.

“Ici! Dogmeat, come!” She was training him to respond to French commands. They were easier to yell in the heat of the moment, and there was always an advantage to speaking a foreign language in a fight. Dogmeat raced back to her from his position up the tracks by a pile of dead ghouls, his tongue lolling and mouth dripping ichor. He skidded to a stop and tried to lick her, but she held his stinking face away from her own with a retch.

“ _Dégolas_! Oh, you stink,” she informed him. He grinned at her, panting and guileless and Jeanne rolled her eyes as he pulled a filthy bandana from her pocket and wiped the gore from Dogmeat’s face as best she could.

“Didn’t think anything was worse than fighting a deathclaw, eh boy?” Jeanne repressed another shudder, trying to drive back the gurgling chorus of snarls that still rang in her ears. Given the choice between swarms of enemies forcing CQC or high ground with targets neatly in her scope, she’d chose the high ground any day. “At least deathclaws don’t have that whole Night of the Living Dead thing going for them. More like Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park, I can handle. ”

Dogmeat licked her hand like he agreed, and Jeanne made another disgusted noise, but a grin tugged at the corners of her mouth as she wiped the dog-slime on the thigh of her fatigues.

_Speaking of disgusting things..._

She turned towards the pile of dead ferals. Sometimes the corpses had bottlecaps on them, which apparently served as currency in this new world. To bad Jeanne had never been a collector; imagine the riches she would have now if they’d kept all the bottle caps from Nate’s epic Nuka-Cola habit.

 _Not now, Nate._ Not in open country, exposed to radiation, and feral ghouls, and who knew what else. Deathclaws, probably. She banished Nate like tossing out a boomerang, not knowing when the thought of him would come back to smack her in the head.

Instead, she looted the ferals. Jeanne flipped one over with the butt of her rifle, frowning at the grotesque face that leered in death, but the shivering revulsion that had rooted her to the spot when the ghouls charged at her dissipated, replaced with mild interest. She took note of the necrotic slough of skin and the living decay, and wished she’d spent more time studying radiation poisoning in basic. Back then, tirage and preparing soldiers for trauma surgery were her primary duties. Radiation ranked secondary when trying to stabilize an open pneumothorax or exsanguinating from a severed limb or shrapnel-shredded carotid artery.

Jeanne dug into a feral’s pocket and pulled out something hard and round.

“What the…” she said, and then hissed a string of curses. “ _Tabarnak de ciboire de crisse!_ ”

A baby rattle. She dropped the little blue toy like it burned and stumbled back a few steps. Why did it have a _baby rattle?_ Some random thing the creature had picked up along the way? Did it have it in its pocket when the bombs went off, carrying it around for 200 years? Bile rose in her throat and she closed her eyes against the memory of a blinding flash of light and a rush of burning air, the sound of a baby’s wail—Shaun...Nate had Shaun—as the platform lowered them into the safety of Vault 111 as the nuclear fallout rushed over their heads in a blast of blistering air.

If they had been moments slower, exposed to the initial blast...

Fuck. _Don’t think about feral ghoul babies, don’t think about them_ …

Deep breath. The air wouldn’t come, trapped by the lump in her throat, but then something wet and cold snuffled at her hand, and she gasped. Dogmeat licked her fingers, stuffing his wet nose further into her palm. The wet, warm, tickling sensation opened her chest, and air invaded her lungs again, and a dull, sharp ache banged at her temples.

She made a list of things that might be causing the headache: residual concussion from the Deathclaw fight, the gash still stitched up and healing, radiation poisoning, stress, dehydration, food poisoning, infection. Grief.

She kept her eyes closed, shaking, breathing, her fingers working at the sweet spot behind Dogmeat’s ears so he groaned and leaned against her legs. The lord knew how long she stood like that, clutching her dog until eventually he stretched and shook his head. Jeanne opened her eyes as the the warm, reassuring weight of the dog against her vanished. She watched the german shepard trot back down the tracks, south, to Oberland Station.

She pulled up the map. Barely two clicks to the settlement that that Minuteman guy had asked her to stop by and help on her way to Diamond City. Barely two clicks for her to get her racing thoughts about feral ghouls carrying around baby rattles under control.

~~~

Oberland Station had a raider problem, as well as a solution. They wanted her to kill the baddies and save the day. Back in Sanctuary, Preston Garvey explained that if she helped settlements when they asked, she might be able to convince them to join the Minutemen cause, to rebuild the militia. Jeanne wondered why Garvey would want a militia full of people who couldn’t defend themselves from raiders, but she still didn’t quite _get_ the Commonwealth as a whole, so she let the tactical thinking slide for now.

When Jeanne arrived at the settlement, she realized the people had bigger, more basic problems than raiders. No clean water, meager crops, beds out in the open, infested with mold and lice. The handful of homesteaders watched her with wary eyes shadowed in gaunt faces, and for a moment Jeanne thought back to the shantytowns in Alberta, the squats in Toronto, where thousands of her fellow citizens trickled to when they lost their jobs, their families, lost everything to Annexation.

She fought for those people, to erase the hungry, lost looks from their eyes. The settlers had that dull, glazed stare when offered a glimpse of hope. They didn’t think she would help..

Her mouth pulled tight for a moment when she thought of going to kill people as a… as a _favor_. She couldn’t even call it self defense, not really… but she could call it justice. Murderers, thieves, rapists. Scum.

She’d been through enough in her life to be able to decide when people deserved to die, especially when everyone else who used to make those decisions were dead.

She found the raider camp in a nearby valley, under a broken section of highway. The setup could not have been more perfect. Jeanne took the high ground, using some low boulders and a bush as decent cover. Her first shot struck home and one of the raiders pinwheeled from a scout perch. At the crack of the gunshot and the death scream of their comrade, the raider nest exploded with angry, leather-and-spike clad fighters, bellowing and trying to find the source of the bullets while Jeanne took pot-shots at them when Dogmeat drew them out into the open for her.

A man wearing a cage over his head like it some sort of armor went down in a spray of crimson, and Jeanne exhaled, picked another target, inhaled, held her breath, and fired. Perching her rifle on some loam took most of the kickback, making it easy to aim, pull the trigger, and pick another target to the rhythm of her breath.

It was easier than she thought it would be to kill humans again.

 _One shot, one kill._ Just like her old CAAB days.

She took aim, held her breath, fired again, and blew a raider’s arm off the the shoulder. Dogmeat lunged and took him down. She winced at the missed headshot, but her scope had a life of its own, already sighted on a Raider that was closing in on her dog, brandishing a tire iron. He died too.

With each kill, the scabs peeled a little more from old wounds she had staunched with the trappings of civilian life: two years of marriage, having a baby, looking for civilian work in an ER or with an ambulance team.

But her escape from Canada’s violent Annexation and her attempt at marriage and a family weren’t enough to keep those old wounds from bleeding again, because it was too easy for her to train her sights on a raider’s skull and pull the trigger. She had learned that lesson a long time ago: it was easier to take someone apart than it was to put them back together.

The last raider died, and she headed down the hill and looted them with abandon. She dug through bags and pockets as if she might find another rattle, or a toy, or a bottle, but there were no vestiges of children here, only guns and drugs and filth. After wiping off the blood, she replaced her bits of scraped together armor with reinforced leather. She found a stash of ammo for her pipe rifle and a handful of 10mm rounds for her sidearm.

“I killed the raiders,” she said, when she got back to the settlement. Her voice felt rusty and awkward to her own ears. Dogs were easier to talk to than people, but she tried to stand upright and look unconcerned for their benefit.

The gratitude from the settlers at Oberland sent a rush of pride tripping up her spine. It was nothing, she told them. Happy to help. She _did_ stand a little straighter, and for a moment she didn’t have to pretend. She told them to send word to Sanctuary Hills—no, just Sanctuary now—send word to Sanctuary that “Jeanne had taken care of the raider problem.”

They told her Oberland Station would commit to the Minutemen.

~~~

She didn’t encounter much trouble getting from Concord to Cambridge, despite that strange encounter with three soldiers from a militant and technology-obsessed group calling itself the “Brotherhood of Steel.” They were a name to add to her growing Wasteland lexicon, to be defined later. Lexington crawled with ghouls, and except for some wildlife and a few raiders camped out on an old ship that sat moored to the Cambridge bridge, she didn’t see a soul. Jeanne easily picked off the raiders with a few assists from Dogmeat, still feeling ashen each time she scoped and dropped a human.

Still, it got easier. A few looted bodies later and a few dozen rounds of ammo richer, she crossed the river and saw the great brick and metal wall of Fenway Park looming ahead.

When Jeanne realized where Diamond City must be, she barked a laugh and shook her head, feeling reality tilt further sideways into absurdity. The _Diamond_ in Diamond City slid into context in a crooked sort of way. Not a jewel, but a game. She and Dogmeat made slow progress through the rubble towards the massive green wall until the sharp report of gunfire sent her ducking for cover.

For all that Preston Garvey had had given her a crash course in Commonwealth before she set out to Oberland, his curriculum had somehow overlooked giant green ogres with automatic rifles, and the hellhounds that came straight out of a Grocknack comic, rabid and foaming. Jeanne crept deeper into the shadow of the green wall, and loaded her pipe rifle, wondering at the poetry of the scene before her. Men in catcher’s uniforms and cage helmets—they must be Diamond City’s guards—fought these green monsters in the shadow of a baseball stadium that had once been known as the Green Monster.

The post-apocalypse was _weird_.

At least the green ogres didn’t leave her guessing. They screamed their name: “SUPER MUTANTS,” and their agenda: “SUPREMACY,” in garbled, deep bass voices, their tongues too thick for their mouths and their brains too small for all the rest of them.

She barked a command at her dog: “Dogmeat, avant!”

Dogmeat bounded ahead and held the line against a charging hellhound. Jeanne sighted down her spectacularly inaccurate homemade rifle and shot the hellhound in the leg, and then in the chest, and then in the head. It died with a strangled growl, and she moved on to the ogres in the building across the alley and whittled them down too, shot by potshot.

One of the baseball guys screamed and fell, but Jeanne kept shooting at the big green ogres until they were all down. After a few moments of blessed silence, she popped out of cover and saw the two guards. The guy who’d been hit jabbed himself with a stim, leaning against a pile of rubble.

“Was that you taking those rifle shots?” one of the guards asked.

She nodded, straightening up as she saw the doubt in his eyes. These guys were cops, a security force, and damn, but she already didn’t like them. “Yeah, that was me. Tough ones, those super m-mutants.” She tried to say the words as if she’d said them a hundred times before, but her tongue tripped and she swallowed hard.

“Well, we took care of em, no need to worry.” He had a thick Boston accent, his voice a drawl, vowels round and nasal. “Thanks for the help. Muties are worse than ferals, I tell ya. At least they didn’t have a suicider this time.”

 _Muties. Suicider._ Jeanne didn’t ask for the definition of “suicider,” hoping she could find out by eavesdropping, at least before she found out from personal experience. Instead of asking she added the words to her mental Dictionary of Commonwealth Slang.

“Uh… Wild times,” she offered.

The guard seemed satisfied. “That’s a lot of scrap ya got there. You a scavver?” He said the word like “scavv-ah.”

 _Scavver_. Did he mean scavenger? She did have a backpack bristling medical supplies and extra armor.

“Uh,” she said, leaning on the butt of her rifle to catch her breath a moment, lungs tight after the fight, the adrenaline receding to leave behind a case of trembling knees. “I’m—”

The guard barreled over her. “Market’s open for another few hours. Copper’s hot right now. The gate’s around the corner, there.” The guard gestured loosely to a bend in the street and she waved him off with a mumbled thank you, and hiked the rest of the way to the gate.

When she got there she found the stadium locked up tight. A young woman stood in the middle of the street, in the midst of an intense argument with an intercom speaker. She gestured wildly, vitriol oozing from every syllable. “I don’t care what the Mayor said. I live here. You can’t keep me out!”

Jeanne watched her for a moment before clearing her throat. “Are they… not letting anyone in?”

The woman turned on her with a manic gleam in her eye. “No, they're not letting _me_ in.” She raised her voice for the benefit of the person on the other end of the intercom. “So much for freedom of the press!”

Jeanne thought it might be a bit much to ask for civil liberties in a post-civic society, but then again, what did she know?

Very little, actually.

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she turned to Jeanne and studied her, taking in the mismatched armor and the fresh but healing gash that ran down one side of her face. “But say… look at you!” She raised her voice another decibel and flapped her hands for good measure. “A trader up from Quincy, you say? Looks like you’ve got a lot of good stuff, there.”

“I’m not—” Jeanne started to say, but the woman gave her a frantic look, shaking her head, and then gestured to the speaker.

“ _Go on_!” The woman mouthed.

Jeanne took a long moment before responding. “Yeah, yeah, from Quincy. I’ve got loads of … uh … gear to trade. Mugs … and… tires and things. Hear you’re looking for … copper?” She cringed.

The woman winced as well but tried to run with the lie anyway.

“Hear that Danny Sullivan? You’re gonna turn a trader away? _Again_? Myrna’s gonna kill you!”

The voice wheedled out of the speaker. “That trader was a ghoul. Is this one a ghoul? Or a synth?”

The woman looked at Jeanne again. “Nope. Human. Skin smoother than a baby’s bottom, you prejudiced little snot. And _anyone_ could be a synth. That doesn’t mean you can lock up the city any time you feel like it! Are you going to let us in, or not?”

“All right, all right! Jeez, Piper. You're gonna get me fired. _Again_.” The voice from the speaker came out tinny and warbled, and then the massive doors groaned like they were in pain, and rumbled open.

Jeanne followed the woman—Piper—up the stairs. Armed guards and a man named McDonough met met them in the low-ceilinged pavilion where the stadium used to sell tickets. She never liked baseball, but Nate had taken her to a handful of games at Fenway before Shaun was born, and she at least enjoyed the spectacle of it, now gone to rust and ruin.

These short, sharp shocks of recognition would keep happening.

She shoved the thought down and instead watched with veiled interest as Piper heckled McDonough and his retorts cut right back her her. Jeanne couldn’t help the laugh that bubble up to shake her shoulders when McDonogh reminded Piper that he was the _Mayor_.

“Is something funny, trader?” McDonogh asked, his head swiveling towards her like it rested on a ball joint.

“Yeah,” Jeanne said before she could help herself. “Mayor of _what,_ baseball?”

The mayor gaped at her, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Piper burst out laughing, and somewhere behind her one of the guards snickered.

“I am the Mayor of the Great Green Jewel, traveler,” the Mayor retorted. “If you’d ever stepped foot out of the settlement—” he sneered, “—or wherever you were whelped, you might know a bit more about our fair city.”

“Sure,” Piper cut in. “You might also know that the _Institute_ has agents here. People disappearing, families scared, broken. And _he_ isn’t doing a damn thing about it.”

Missing people? Jeanne’s heart leapt a little.

The mayor turned to Jeanne and took a slick shift from antagonistic to smarmy. “And you? Will you be … staying long? Sullivan said you were a trader.”

“God, I hope not,” she said before she could help herself. Someone snickered again, the same dark laugh. “I’ve got scrap to sell.”

It wouldn’t hurt her to have a cover identity for Diamond City, something she could fall back on if she had to return. “But I’m also looking for someone who’s gone missing. Kidnapped, actually.”

“Missing person? Too bad, too bad. Such a common, tragic tale.” McDonogh started to back away slowly as if she’d admitted to being contagious, as if looking for a missing person was grotesque, something he could catch. “I wish you the utmost most luck in your search. Ta!” The mayor waddled off, toting two guards like ducklings behind him.

“I won’t be silenced, McDonough!” Piper went up on her toes, hands cupping her mouth as she hollered after the Mayor. “You can’t stop the press!”

Jeanne stared at the young woman, who waved off the Mayor as if ridding herself of an annoying insect, though insects were a lot bigger than Jeanne was comfortable with these days, and not so much annoying as incredibly dangerous.

“Ah, Mayor McSucmbag,” Piper said, sighing as if she were almost fond of him. “He’s not gonna help you with a missing person case. It’s pretty much impossible to get anyone to talk about missing folks around here. Well, anyone except Nick.”

Jeanne frowned. “Why won’t people talk about kidnappings? Who’s Nick?”

“Folks are… they’re scared. Of being replaced. Or of losing their families. Old Nick Valentine’s the only one who isn’t scared of the Institute. Or… he cares more than he’s scared, maybe.”

Jeanne faltered a moment, but her desperation for a lead eclipsed her need to pretend she knew what the hell was going on. “Replaced? The Institute? Is that some kind of… crime organization?”

“Uh… wow. Okay. Not from around here I guess?” Piper cocked her head.

And there was that look again, that "jeez lady, what planet are you from?" look that Jeanne so desperately wanted to avoid.

 _You’re asking the wrong question. Not planet, but century. The 21st century,_ she wanted to scream. Instead, she shrugged.

“It’s complicated,” Jeanne said, meeting Piper’s eyes. _Drop it. Drop it._

Piper’s eyes narrowed, her head tilting to the side. Jeanne knew that look—it was a look Nate sometimes got when he chasing down an important detail for a story. Piper wasn’t going to drop it.

“You’re from a Vault, aren’t you?” Piper leaned in, eyes lighting up.

Jeanne opened her mouth to deny it, but she shut it after a moment. Did it matter? No one seemed to care who she was or where she was from. Scavver, trader up from Quincy, from a vault, from 200 years ago. And no one cared that her son was stolen from her, or that her husband had been murdered.

“Is it that obvious?” Her voice was soft, and she heard the edge of defeat there. _Shore up, sweetheart. You’re not so soft._

“Sort of… yeah. Your teeth are too good. And your skin is nice. And you’re a bit out of touch. But really, the pip-boy is a dead giveaway. Look, we can’t talk here…” Piper shifted, her eyes darting as if she suddenly realized that something with ears lurked in the shadows. “And I gotta go check on my sister.”

Jeanne started to shake her head.

Piper brightened up a bit “Say! I’m a reporter. I’d love to hear your story ... Maybe spread the word about who you’re looking for. Hear about your Vault experience. Stories on vaults always sell a lot of papers.”

That sparkling look of curiosity suddenly made way too much sense. A reporter, like Nate. A _journalist_ , Nate always corrected people. Jeanne could see him grinning at her, the charmer. It was that look she’d fallen in love with, the bright spark of interest in her, in her story as he worked on his pieces about the Toronto squats. _War Never Changes_ , he’d called the article. And the way he’d looked when it was published in the Bugle, and again when GNR picked up the story? He was so exultant of his hard work, so eager to share what he was trying to do to help her country, to bring the stifled news of criminal atrocities back to the US, how could she not be in love with him? She owed him … well—

 _Not now, Nate_. His memory settled back into the quiet of her mind, but not before the lump could rise in her throat.

Piper was halfway down the stairs into the old stadium by the time reality reasserted itself. “Come by my office later, after you talk to Nick! Publick Occurrences, can’t miss it!”

“Wait, Piper…” But the woman was already out of sight and Jeanne gritted her teeth against the veritable torrent of foul curses that began to bubble up in her frustration. “Goddamn... _câlice de osti_! Does anyone know how to have a proper conversation anymore!” She took a deep breath, stilling the rush of anger.

Fine. She’d find this Nick, and he’d help her find her son. Reporters and detectives and police had survived the apocalypse. The world was giving her things to work with.

Where was Dogmeat?

“Dogmeat? _Ici_!”

He didn’t come. He was usually right beside her when they stood still, leaning into her legs or dusting the ground the broom of his wagging tail. “Dogmeat?”

Where had the scruffy troublemaker gone off to?

She turned sharply to find one of those catcher-gear-clad guards trying to shoo the dog away. Dogmeat leaned into his leg instead, and the guard relented when he noticed Jeanne looking and opted to give the dog a friendly scratch being the ears instead of another gentle shove with his boot.

“He isn’t a pet,” she said.

Dogmeat gave a low, doggy moan of appreciation as if to disprove her point. She scowled at the fuzzy traitor. Dogmeat yawned, and leaned a little harder to the guard’s scratches.

“Nah, I know,” the guard said, his voice strikingly non-regional in contrast to the other- guard’s thick Bostonian yowl. “Saw him help with those Super Mutants.”

He wore sunglasses that reflected Jeanne back at herself in double, and the shades made him look even more like an old-world cop. He straightened up and gave Dogmeat a nudge with his foot.

She shuddered, avoiding his eyes, trying not to think about the American MPs hunting her. Instead, she glared at her dog and pointed to her heel. “Dogmeat, ici!”

The shepherd lurched to his feet with another moan and a stretch, tail wagging in slow sweeps as he fell in behind her.

She glared at Dogmeat for a moment. _Trator._ Her gaze flicked back up to Cop, trying to ease the frown between her brows. “Do you know where I can find Nick Valentine?”

Cop shrugged. “I’m going on my break, lady. Ask him.” His lenses flashed as he nodded over her shoulder, lit a cigarette and sauntered towards an elevator.

She stared in disbelief a moment. He couldn’t answer a single _question_? Jeanne huffed and towards the other guard.

“Danny Sullivan, right?” She asked.

The young man nodded, looking a pleased that she used his name. Her mouth twitched. Danny didn’t have the same air of bored intimidation as Cop, probably because she could read look into the young man’s guileless eyes.

“You’re not a trader, are you?” Danny asked, clutching his rifle like a boy right out of basic.

The lie came easily since deciding it was her cover story. “I sure am. Up from Quincy, like Piper said. Came to trade, and look for someone who got lost on the way.”

“Right.” It was hard to say if he believed her or not. “Well, let one of us Diamond City Security guys know if you run into any trouble. People can be a bit shady about outsiders.”

“Apparently.” She thought of the Mayor, and the aviator-wearing cop. The word felt so dry it might crumble. “Where can I find Nick Valentine?”

“Old Nicky? Sure, him and Ellie’s got an office set up in the alley off of First.” Sullivan pointed down the stairs, into what remained of Fenway Park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that got angsty. The thing that bugged me most about Fallout was the lack of shock and grief that the Sole Survivor showed through most of the game, except in key moments. My baby??? My dead spouse??? So this is my angsty vision of Jeanne's first big steps in the Commonwealth.
> 
> I have the skeletons and some meat of another few chapters done, with plenty of snarky Deacon POV. I'm so excited to write this, Deacon is way too much fun. Jeanne? Not so much fun yet, but go easy on her... because of the apocalypse and all.
> 
> Thanks to MizDirected for whipping this chapter into shape with an amazing beta read and all that sage writing advice. <3


	3. Probable Causality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Nick Valentine didn’t need rescuing because Ellie rescued her Synth Dad a few days before the Sole Survivor arrived, okay? Now there’s a prompt. *wink wink nudge nudge*

**Deacon**

The vaultie wasted no time in learning the lay of Diamond City. She had cover story, even if it wasn’t straight yet. Deacon found that interesting in and of itself, both that she lied about her origins, and that she didn’t do a very good job.

Still, Deacon gave her an “A” for effort.

The vaultie fed most people a line about being a “trader up from Quincy,” thought she occasionally claimed to be scavver, which didn’t pass. She had all of her teeth and several more fingers than most scavvers could claim. And she was just so clean. Her skin was fair, clear—if sunburned—and dusted with an abundance of freckles. Not to mention the pip-boy was a dead giveaway that she had once vault dweller. Or she could let people think she’d _killed_ a vault dweller...

Maybe it was intentional. Maybe she worked her various cover stories to kept people guessing. A good lie wasn’t always one people believed, but one that cracked the truth enough for doubt to fill and set the fractures with an uneasy mortar.

Deacon was more impressed with how quickly she picked up the Commonwealth lingo. He caught snatchs of conversation between her and some of the traders down in the market, slang like _muties_ and _swatters_ and _scavvers_ starting to sound natural in her wry, gently accented voice.

She was damn perceptive too, watching and measuring everything… which made it hard to get too close. That, and her damn _dog._ Friendly or not, the dog would give him away if he greeted a guy wearing sunglasses _every time_ they crossed paths _._

Deacon followed her around from a healthy, guardsmanly distance. She sold junk to the merchants, and he wondered how her back didn’t break under the weight of all that useless crap. Still, Diamond City Surplus took it all, just as they always did. He watched her get lost by the outfield wall, wandering around until she stumbled on MacDonough's weekly “I am not a synth!” speech. Deacon wished he could have seen her face up close, but he _did_ manage to get a glimpse of her mouthing the mayor’s words as she watched, brows drawn down in abject confusion.

 _I am not a synth!_ At the words, Deacon got a flash of an image from an old history book, a corrupt politician, a president, raising his arms in acquiescence, pointer and middle fingers making a v shape in silhouette.

MacDonough didn’t have an inkling of how deep his legacy ran. Not one tiny clue. Deacon bet that the vaultie knew. They might be counted among the handful in the greater Boston area that even knew Richard Nixon’s name, along with the few dozen pre-war ghouls.

She turned away from the mayor’s grandstanding after a few minutes, and Deacon was sure he saw her mouth “ _what_ ” along with some other words he couldn’t read. More of those foreign cursewords, perhaps.

_Cris-e. Taburnack. Cal-eese._

Where the hell was she _from_?

He gave himself a little shake. He’d know all the details in good time, as long as he kept watching. She kept dropping hints like she _wanted_ someone to know more about her, like she was looking for a witness even behind those cover stories.

_Red and white flag in the safe. Unfamiliar curses. Different names. And she knew how to use a rifle._

The future must be an absolute trip for her, probably a bad one. At least she was equipped to deal with the dangers.

She didn’t head to First Base even after the Mayor’s little reenactment of ancient history. Instead she visited Piper Wright, and then the schoolhouse. She left the school looking pale, her eyes fever hot, even from a distance. Next was Sheng’s water purification operation, where she asked questions about how they filtered out rads and built generators. She seemed to be mapping the settlement, finding landmarks, sorting through the clusters of people like she was looking for something. What, Deacon wasn’t sure. She wasn’t in a rush, but she didn’t exactly take her time either. She was simply... thorough.

After what felt like eons, the vaultie found the bright red eyesore of a neon heart that pointed the way to Valentine. Deacon loved that sign, but despite his affection for the synth detective, and his respect for the vaultie’s methodical process, he wanted to shake her, tell her to find the Railroad already. If he apraoched her, he could cut out Nick as the middleman and ditch the whole roundabout investigation that she was trying to follow. Deacon _knew_ down in his gut that the Institute had her son, and were responsible for her husband’s murder.

Deacon could save the vaultie days, even weeks of agony by just walking up and shaking her hand and telling her how it was gonna be. How he could _help._

But that would be counter to Deacon’s hard line: People needed to survive on their own, and find the Railroad in their own time, in their own way. It had to be _their_ idea, or they would resent the Railroad, or quit, or fail. And quits and fails were a security breach, which only ended one way. Luckily that wasn’t _his_ job.

As much as Deacon wanted to throw the vaultie into the game like she was an duplicate Tops Queen of Diamonds in his Caravan set, just to see what chaos would ensue by changing the suits and reversing the order of play…

He didn’t _know_ her.

But if the Railroad didn’t snag her first, someone else would. The Minutemen _already_ had her ear.

Deacon lit up a cigarette, leaning against a wall like he was on a break, just around the corner from Valentine’s door. He settled in, toing a clod of dirt and grinding into dust. His fingers drummed absently on his thigh, and his toe sought another lump of earth.

The minutiae of tradecraft involved a lot of standing around, dissolving dirt clods into dust and trying not to sigh with boredom. Deacon wondered how many hours of his life he’d lost standing around pretending to be someone else while he waited for a mark to hurry the hell up and get on with it already. If he added up all the years, the days… he must be well over 100,000 hours of this feeling of doing _nothing_ and getting _nowhere._

Deacon suspected that his delusions of effectiveness were slowly being replaced with actually being useless. What good was intel if it didn’t do anything to to stop things like the Switchboard? Was the warring guilt and boredom what made him so eager to throw in the vaultie as a new variable?

The cherry of his cigarette burned down almost to his fingers when goosebumps lifted on the back of his neck. He flexed a hand around his swatter, but someone cleared their throat.

“D’you have a geiger counter?” A woman wearing a yellow coat held together with rope and pins surveyed him like she was trying to remember his name, eyes narrowed.

Deacon eased his grip on the swatter and be blew out a stream of smoke. The Tourist shuffled around into his periphery. He shook his head and snuffed the cigarette on the wall and gave the counter-sign.

“Sorry, bub. Mine’s in the shop,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, if you find one, I’ll be in the Dugout for the next hour.”

“I’ll have someone meet you,” he said, and the woman nodded sharply and walked off.

_Well, shit._

The vaultie was still in Valentine’s office, but he couldn’t miss a Tourist message. Trouble was, the vault dweller (okay the vault _sleeper_ ) could be in there for _hours._ Or she could leave in the next five minutes. What was a spy to do?

_Shit. Shit shit…_

He leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the corrugated metal overhang that shielded him from the afternoon sun. He had an hour before the Tourist would bail on him. He’d give the vaultie forty minutes. Trouble was that when he started paying attention to time, it stretched. Minutes globbed together, quivering and gathering like thick drops of rain on the tip of a leaf, only to fall all at once and turn the ground to mid.

Deacon switched spots a few times, found a bench, another wall to lean on. He drank some water and ate a Fancy Lads’ or three. He thought about card games, and truth, and leverage. He ground another clod of dirt into dust.

He hated to lose a mark, but Tourist 4Ca wouldn’t bother approach him for anything less than significant. On the other hand, what was as significant as someone 210-years out of time who had a grudge against the Institute?

But she was just one job, one that wasn’t even _technically_ a job. More just a hunch, based on a note left for him in a garbage bin.

And she’d still be around after a pint, right?

_Right._

He huffed in annoyance, pushed off the wall, and went to go find a place to change.

 Eight minutes later, he found the tourist at the bar, her hat saving him a spot. Deacon picked up the hat and tossed it on the counter, sliding onto the stool. He flagged Vladim and ordered a beer. The barkeep served him without a flicker of of recognition, even thought he’d been coming here for years under various personas _._ If people knew a wig and a cowboy hat was all it took to be a completely different person, wouldn’t _everyone_ be someone else? He ordered a pint, and turned to Tourist 4Ca.

“I heard from our friend Randolph,” she said.

Deacon’s hackles rose. _Randolph_. As far as he was concerned, Randolph Safehouse died in a simultaneous strike on the Switchboard. Deacon himself had done the dubious honor of scratching out the name on the HQ chalkboard.

But if a runner was running…

Deacon nodded as if his guts hadn’t just dropped into his feet like they wanted a new pair of boots. “Randolph, huh?” Deacon pretend to take a sip from his pint. “Never thought I’d hear from _him_ again.”

“Yeah,” the tourist replied, scrubbing calloused fingers over her chin. “Says he’s had some trouble carving out a route for his packages after the switchblade snapped.”

Deacon considered the bubbles floating in his watered-down, armpit-warm beer as if the they spelled out an answer to this new mystery.

The bubbles spelled out the word “trap” so clearly he could _almost_ see them.

“Should I check the mail?” He asked, and took a sip, drinking down the bubbles to quiet them.

“Yeah,” the tourist said, pushing back her stool with a dull screech on the ancient concrete floor. “Word is, he’s looking forward to hearing from you.”

She stood and flipped him a cap. Deacon caught it and added the rest of their tab’s worth of change on the bar. Their little routine—he had over a dozen of them, one or two for each tourist he’d onboarded and trained.

Tourist 2Ca paid one cap for _all was well_ , two caps for _duck and/or run._

All was well. And yet… trap.

Waving off the Tourist he sauntered back outside and found yet another spot to change back into his guard uniform. That made five. More than a three-change day was a busy one, and he had the vaultie to thank for it.

Speaking of… he did a beat walk around the bases, humming to himself as he scanned the alleys and buildings. Nothing. He installed himself back by Nick’s office, but five minutes later he saw Ellie Perkins leave and lock the door behind her.

Deacon cursed. If they weren’t in the office… He wandered again, sauntering through the market, over the ramshackle bridge to Sheng’s, and then along the green wall. Deacon pretend to patrol the outfield squat with the open air beds, and still found nothing. His best bet was to hang out in the markets at this point, because if she was still in the city she’d almost certainly pass through to leave.

He tilted his head back to study the skyline and froze. The silhouetted figure of a four legged animal sat at the edge of the topmost West Stand stairs. Deacon stared at it for a second, before he shifted his gaze to two figures huddled on the other end of the platform. One kneeled before a door… a door where...

Where last week, Kellogg kept a kid. A much older kid than a baby that the vaultie was probably looking for… But who said _when_ Nate Deckard had been shot? Because of the cryo, it could have well been 100 years ago. Or ten.

_Oh. Oh, this was too good._

Deacon suppressed a wicked little grin as he squinted behind his glasses to make out the figure kneeling at the door. He could just make out the blunt cut of the vaultie’s chin length hair swinging forward as she bent forward to peer at something on the door, probably the lock.

 _Good luck with that, sweetheart._ Deacon knew that lock personally, and it wasn’t one _he’d_ been able to crack.

“Hey, those folks supposed to be up there?” a low voice said behind him, radiating lazy authority. Deacon gave the figures one last squint before turning to find a fellow DCS guard following his gaze up to the West Stands.

Deacon assumed the same tone. “Yeah,” he said. “They got permission from the Mayor’s office,” Deacon said. “I’m just keeping an eye on ‘em for McDonough.”

The guard peered at Deacon for a moment, before he grunted in affirmation and wandered off.

Deacon took a deep breath and shook out the tingle in his hands. His eyes drifted back to the figures up in the scaffolds. A moment later, the vaultie stood, and pushed on the door. It opened. Deacon’s eyebrows climbed up towards his non-existent hairline and he huffed a laugh. Damn it if the vaultie didn’t have a few tricks up her sleeve. But if Kellogg was the kidnapper, and she’d be going after him…

That meant she’d be dead soon, and Deacon had real work to do. If Randolph was stirring, that took priority over the antique.

He glanced up towards the empty West Sands balcony and hesitated, his gut twisting. He could _help_ with Kellogg, from the shadows. The man was a wrecking ball, completely lacking in subtlety. He’d be easy to find. Deacon could track him down, take out some of Kellogg’s persistent synth guards, and lead Jeanne right to him, without either knowing he was running the play.

Or he could do his job and get the dead-drop intel, give it to Des if he decided that Des needed to see it, and then try to pick up the vaultie’s trail again.

The West Stands stood empty now, the door firmly shut behind the little trio of woman, synth, and dog.

Another guard strolled by, and Deacon’s collar started to grow tight around his neck. His cover wouldn’t last much longer as the guard rotation changed and he was still prowling about.

It was time to go.

~~~

Desdemona narrowed her eyes as the holotape played for the second time, her mouth pinchind and growing tighter with each word from the Randolph operative begging for assistance.

“What do you think?” She fixed him with a blue-eyed stare, and Deacon blinked behind his sunglasses.

“I don’t have opinions Des,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m just the messenger. Your humble—”

“Servant,” she finished for him. Des knew the best way to deal with him was _not_ to deal with him, unless she didn’t have a choice. “Where have you been, anyway? Anything from that drop in Concord?”

“Nah, just some coordinates to a new tourist stand. Saw a couple of Minutemen fighting raiders though, but nothing major.”

“Minuitmen? Some survived?”

“Apparently.”

“I’ll do some thinking on Randolph,” she said with a sigh. “And don’t make any contact. I want them quarantined, even if they start running ops again. Understood?”

“Sure. In the meantime I’ll —”

Desdemona cut him off. “You’ll do what you do best.”

“You know, I keep trying to decide what that is,” he said, ticking the skill off on one finger. “I’m really good at crochet, you know. Making hats. Or panting people's nails.” He counted a third finger. “And I always win at tic-tac-t—.”

“Deacon…” Desdemona said.

“I’m good at—”

“You’re good at being a pain in my ass.” Desdemona made a disgusted noise and turned away.

“I’ll carry on with that, then,” he said to her back.

Deacon grinned and watched until no one was watching _him_ , and ducked into the strategy room off the main hall that formed HQ. He exhaled the breath that had been sitting tight in his chest. He could never breathe easy with the crypt walls closed in around him, trapping him, letting people fix their eyes on him. His HQ uniform consisted of a ratty undershirt and a pair of worn out jeans and sneakers, perpetually untied. He would be unremarkable in a crowd, but underground the way eyes trailed him as he moved through HQ, and then slid off of him when he acknowledged the attention made his skin crawl, made it hard to breathe.

Yeah, there goes freaky Deacon. There goes the Heavy that’s actually a lightweight. The sneak, the liar, the spy.

Deacon bounced down the stairs to the back room that served as their strategy pen where they kept P.A.M., and stopped short when he saw Glory entering a report into the terminal. Time to be as annoying as possible so the _actual_ Heavy would give him some time alone with the robot.

“Hey Pammy,” Deacon said to P.A.M.’s modified femme fatale-bot platform.

P.A.M. raised her arms and gave her pincer-grip hands a spin. “Token nickname acknowledged. Agent Deacon recognized. What is your inquiry?”

Deacon grinned into P.A.M.’s two circular optics. “Do you do astrology predictions? Oooh, what does my moon sign says about my future career opportunities? Conflicts with coworkers?” He glanced sidelong at Glory, keeping his face eager.

Glory slapped her palms on the reports table, on either side of the terminal and shot him a dirty look over her shoulder. “Stop harassing the poor robot, Deacon,” she said.

“Hey, I’m getting vital intel here. Any little bit of leverage helps. My sun is in Scorpio, by the way. Moon is in Gemini.” He winked, even though Glory couldn’t see his eyes hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses.

“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about 99.9% of the time.” Glory said, shaking her head. The silver haired queen of the Railroad Heavies liked to pretend she wasn’t amused by Deacon’s standup routines, but the faintest smile twitched at her lips—her biggest tell. Glory would never be a recon and intel specialist for good reason. She had too much passion. Too many tells. Too big a gun.

The _biggest_ gun, actually. Calling it a “minigun” was a serious misnomer.

P.A.M. gave a twitch. “Inaccurate. Based on observations of interactions between Agent Deacon and Agent Glory, intercommunication comprehension occurs at compiled rate of 83.37%.”

Glory snorted through her nose and stormed past them, taking the stairs back to HQ main two at a time.

Deacon allowed himself a tiny smile before turning back to the robot. “What about my future, Pammy?”

P.A.M. went still, fixing him with her optic. “Future predictions based on the perceived movement of the stars caused by the rotation of the earth are outside of my programed parameters.”

“You’re a riot,” Deacon said. P.A.M. stared at him, circuits whirling as she continued to weigh and measure him down to his last probable molecule. “But listen. Now that we’re alone, I’ve got to ask you something.”

“What is your query?”

“What would a completely new element do to our game?”

“Specify.”

“Add a variable you could not have predicted. Could be for us, against us, or neither, holding still, moving towards us, or away. It came from nothing. Didn’t exist a week ago. Fell from the sky. You know the story, the Wizard of Oz?”

P.A.M.’s circuits clicked and Deacon wondered if she could feel irritation. Deacon thought that if anyone was capable of annoying a robot, it was him.

“Negative, agent. A rogue variable will infinitely skew current predictive models. The paradigm will shift. I cannot predict anything more until the variable is defined. Query: Do you wish to add this rogue variable to current statistical outputs?”

A little thrill washed over him. Another paradigm shift was overdue for this little operation by oh… say a decade. The losses at the Switchboard shredded the status quo, but the Railroad was still in a tailspin, and there was no way to tell where they’d stop and what direction they might be facing when they did. Deacon was on the hunt for leverage, a handhold, anything that he could use to flip the paradigm, had been for years, and he had a funny sense that the vaultie was going to make a very excellent fulcrum.

“Nah, we’ll keep in shelved for now. Treat it like predicting the future with the stars, okay Pammy? A fun thing to play with, but not something to make decisions by.”

“Acknowledged. Human-machine interface terminated.”

Deacon slipped out the bolt tunnel without a single soul noticing, and headed back to Diamond City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I got attacked by a massive plot bunny and now I know where this story is going for sure. I’ve added a Not Canon Compliant tag and a few others. I have a delusion that it’s gonna be good but what do I know?


	4. Headspace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon my French, it’s really rusty. I’m not bilingual, but I’ll do my best to write a decent bilingual character. 
> 
> CW for gore and medical procedures at the end of this chapter.

**Jeanne**

She might have been crawling on her hands and knees through mud for all the progress Jeanne felt they were making. Still, she hauled herself up yet another hill after the trail of beer bottles, cigars, broken robots, and bloody rags as Dogmeat lead Jeanne, Nick, and Piper into the twilight at the end of a long day of tracking. While they hiked, Jeanne rolled three questions around in her mind like worry stones. 

What if the blood on those rags was Shaun’s?

What if Shaun was ten years old?

And if he was older… would he even remember her?

Jeanne’s hand flexed on the grip of her 10mm and she examined the gun’s sights, letting the familiarity of a rote safety check help dissolve the lump in her throat. 

Nick and Piper fanned out behind to scout for bloodbugs, ferals, and other stalking nasties. Jeanne ignored the sideways glances they shot her, mouth set in a grim line, hoping to ward off their sympathy-filled eyes. 

Up another hill, around another rusted-out chain link fence, they headed further and further west and Jeanne wondered if they were even _in_ Boston anymore. At this point, she could probably head due north and hit Sanctuary in a few days.

She wondered how Preston was doing, trying to build a new life in the bombed out husk of her old one.

The rain started, because of _course_ it did. Drops fell in a miserable pissing drizzle and Piper looked up at the sky, groaning. 

“Least it’s not a rad storm,” she said, pulling the collar of her red coat up higher around her neck. 

Dogmeat didn’t seem to notice the rain, dauntless as he trekked onward. The old detective didn’t seem to mind either, yellow eyes bright and watchful in the gloom. Jeanne tugged the new-to-her leather cowboy hat down over her forehead and wished she had a proper jacket, not threadbare military fatigues covered in bits of leather armor. She also wished she could justify using Med-X to ease the deep-seated ache in her legs, her abs, her breasts, the pounding at her temples, and the burn in her feet. A veritable litany of aches called out for relief. And while she was making a wishlist, a dry warm bed would be nice.

And having her son back wouldn’t go amiss either.

Rain dripped from the brim of her hat and slipped down her collar. Jeanne submitted to the rain as she submitted to the rest of her reality. Submission and acceptance were the only way to pass through such horror, even outright danger. She could fight and fight until she dropped from despair and exhaustion, or she could rationalize herself into a place stable and functional enough to do what she needed to do in order to find Shaun. 

Another trickle of rain dripped down the back of her neck and she embraced the chill of it, reminding her that she was _here._ Each new step forward dragged a little something more from her, until she managed to cocoon herself in the comfortable, numb certainty of her situation. 

_Remember. It’s 2287. Remember the world ended and you can’t go back._

Jeanne made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat as they crested yet another rise, but Dogmeat barked and raced off at a dead run before Piper could ask what was wrong, besides the obvious answer of _everything_. 

Jeanne roused herself from a steady plod, raising her pistol and sprinting to the edge of the sparse forest that ended in a road. Across the road hulked a massive old stone building, still mostly intact.

“Fort Hagan,” Nick said as he shuffled to a stop beside her. “Gunners take up here sometimes, but it’s been empty for years, far as I know.”

Across the street, Dogmeat sat at the front door of the old fort, tongue lolling, his tail wagging slightly. The trio picked their way across the cracked asphalt and inspected the door. Dogmeat gazed up at her, clearly impressed with himself.

“ _Bon chien_. Good dog,” she murmured. “Is this where he’s hiding?” She tossed Dogmeat a bit of jerky. “You go hide now. Wait over there. _Attends la-bas_! Go and wait!” Dogmeat stared at her for a moment, until she raised her arm pointed back towards the woods. He gave a little huff and then he was gone, racing back to towards the trees. 

“What’s with all the funny words, Blue?” Piper said, her head tilting. 

“I’m teaching him French,” Jeanne replied, not bothering to comment on the nickname. “Next I’m going to teach him _Frere Jacques_.”

Piper’s stare was blank. “Free-her what’sit?” 

Behind them, Nick chuckled and shook his head. 

“Never mind,” Jeanne said, shooting Nick a curious little glance. _Someone_ knew his old world children’s songs.

“Well,” Piper said, shooting her another side-eyed look. “This is it, isn’t it? Weird place to bunker down, if you ask me. Unless he’s got like… an army in there or something.”

Jeanne huffed a laugh, pushing her hat towards the back of her head and brushing clinging strands of hair off her forehead. Piper smiled back, but Jeanne looked away before they could have an inevitable _moment._

“So, do you want to go in?” Piper asked.

“Yes,” Jeanne said. She tried the door, but it was locked. “It _is_ strange though. It was too easy to follow his trail, as much as Dogmeat is a good tracker and this place… it feels like a tomb. It feels like a trap.” 

Three broken bobby pins later, she finally got the door unlocked, but it wouldn’t budge when she tried shoving it open with a shoulder. 

“Blocked from the other side,” she said and waved them to follow her around the huge stone building. “Looks like we need another way in.”

Getting into the fort was easy once they found the underground garage. They shot some ferals lurking between cars and then Nick and Piper watched her back as Jeanne picked the lock on the service door, opening it on a dank, cement stairwell. 

Staying alive once they got into the old fort turned out to be a bit more of a challenge. 

Jeanne stared, dumbstruck when she came face to face with her first synth. 

“Holy _fuck_ ,” she murmured. Robots were common before the war from the worker units on her family’s farm, to military and medical hardware. Even Codsworth wasn’t meant to approximate humanity except in his familiar mannerisms… but these things—these _synths—_ were the closest thing to _alive_ she’d ever seen in a robot. Their eyeballs moved in their sockets like real eyes. Their grinning jaws moved when they spoke. They had _teeth._ Why did a robot need _teeth_?

That was the wrong question. They weren’t robots. They were synthetic. Androids, built to approximate human beings. Like Nick. Except Nick _was_ human. Sort of. Mostly. In a way, these Gen-1 synths were Nick’s ancestors.

Jeanne’s finger twitched on the trigger of her pistol and the synth’s arm flew off. It staggered and for a moment Jeanne thought it would go down, but then the synth righted itself and kept coming at her with that same measured, relentless pace. She shot it again, once, twice, until it disintegrated into a pile of sparking struts and wires, clicking it’s final directive in a broken, mechanical voice.

Jeanne and her partners mowed their way through five floors of synth resistance, dodging their sensors and trying to draw them into kill zones. Nick even unleashed a Protectron at one point, which worked wonders until it killed all the synths in the room and then turnedon _them_. 

“Let’s stick to one kind of robot, okay Nick?” Jeanne shouted as she took the final shot on the security bot. It fell forward with a thunk and a creak of unreliable floor boards, sending up a puff of dust. 

“You handled yourself just fine, kid!” Nick called back.

But the synths kept coming. Jeanne stumbled as a bright line of pain shot down her arm, followed by a rush of hot cauterization. Laser fire was a _bitch._ She jerked, pulling the trigger on her own gun and landed a lucky shot, blowing a synth’s a leg off at the knee. It fell flat on it’s face and whined….and _started crawling_ like some severed arm out of a cheesy zombie movie, still firing. 

Jeanne shot it in the head, wincing away from the spray of sparks that flew towards her face as the synth screeched and died.

Nick stomped another synth with the heel of his dusty, old fashioned oxfords and Piper cooly shot one from over Nick’s shoulder. The reporter ducked around a corner and in another moment her voice rang out, calling the all clear. 

Jeanne pried a laser rifle from one of the synth’s hands and examined the weapon, noting the glow sights and the calibrated muzzle. Not bad, really… Better than her pipe rifle. After a moment’s consideration she raised the gun to her shoulder and trained it on a mannequin head on the other end of the hall and squeezed the trigger. The gun hissed and hummed in her hands. Jeanne let herself revel in the lack of kickback and the sharp hiss of burning ozone for a moment. Much better. She dropped her pipe rifle with a thunk and swung the new the weapon on her back.

“If these are Gen-1’s,” she asked, turning to Nick and Piper, “what are Gen-2’s like?”

“Kinda like Nick,” Piper said, dropping a severed synth limb. “But less… human.” 

Jeanne glanced over to see if Nick was listening, but instead of looking offended, he nodded. “I’m somewhere between Gen-2 and Gen-3. Some kind of experiment. Look kid, the only way to tell if someone is a synth, a Gen-3 synth, is to bust their head open and take a look inside.” Nick scrunched up his nose a little. “There are... components inside. I’ve seen it once or twice, myself. Nasty business.” 

Piper made a face, but Jeanne nodded. 

“I think that would make it a bit tricky to confirm synth accusations without committing homicide,” she said. 

“You see doubles popping up once in awhile,” Piper said. “That’s the weirdest thing. It’s impossible to tell who’s real. Sometimes the two meet…and they fight each other. I think the Institute does it on purpose. Like an experiment.” Piper rubbed her arms over her coat and shuddered. “It’s sick.”

Piper stood back as the door to the elevator slid open with a friendly ding.

“Oh, no,” Jeanne said, shaking her head when she saw the lights flicker. 

“They work fine,” Piper said.

“Really?” Jeanne said, eying the scarred and pitted door. “ _Really?_ I’m pretty sure this whole thing with Kellogg is a setup, but that…” She pointed to the elevator. “That is an _actual_ death trap.”

“They’re fine, kid,” Nick said. “The ones that still work use fusion power wired direct to the cabling system, remote from whatever electricity they used to pump into buildings.” 

“And what about old cables?” She said “Dropping ten stories in freefall? Getting _trapped_? Stuff like that happened back when elevators _worked._ Now there’s not even anyone to rescue us.” 

“We’ve been all over this building,” Nick said. “He’s got to be in a sub-basement. There’s no other access anywhere I’ve seen.” 

Jeanne took a moment to ease the tightness in her chest, trying not to think about closed in spaces or the cold and the dark, and stepped into the elevator.

“If we get killed by the elevator, you are both dead,” she said. 

“Might want to work on your threats there, Blue,” Piper said. 

Jeanne shot her a dirty look as the doors closed with a cheerful ding, and the elevator dropped them into the belly of the beast. 

~~~

Jeanne shuddered as they passed through the sterile room with the operating table. Scarce and precious stimpacks and Rad-X, as well as drug paraphernalia lay strewn like so much detritus. She could smell the blood. The operating table was clean, almost warm to the touch. 

If Shaun… if that bastard hurt her son, tortured him, harmed one hair…

A man’s voice rippled over the loudspeaker, crackling and hollow. “I’ll hand it to you. You’re determined. I’m giving you one last chance to turn back. Walk through that door and I can’t make any promises that you’ll walk out again.”

And that would be Kellogg. He was a talker, then. She could work with that.

After a moment of thought she brought up her Pip-Boy and tuned to DCR, cranking the volume all the way up. _Ain’t That a Kick in the Head_ screamed so loud it made the speakers on the poor old computer squeal and pop, but if Kellogg had the room bugged it would cover her quiet voice as she beckoned her team forward. 

Piper gave her a curious look, hands over her ears to muffle the noise and Jeanne pointed up to the speakers. Piper gave her a nod and then Jeanne dug into her bag and handed Piper and Nick a a couple of frag mines between them. Piper took them gingerly, but Nick simply nodded.

She kept her voice low so her team had to lean in to hear. 

“This man is not a joke. He does not… he does not _fuck around._ I watched him shoot my husband in the head in cold blood, in order to take my baby from Nate’s arms.” The sharp bite of ragged nails dug into her palms, reminding her that those hands _did_ indeed belong to her and that pain was _real_. 

Piper nodded, looking pale and determined. “We know, Blue. We’re gonna get him. Make him pay,” she said.

Nick nodded again, looking even more serious than usual.

“Not until he gives me Shaun. I _will_ kill him if I have to, but Shaun comes first. Maybe Shaun is in the next—” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “—in the next room. If not, Kellogg can tell us where he is.”

“He’s going to try and kill us,” Nick said, his voice monotone. “I dunno if he’s gonna talk.”

Jeanne nodded. “I’m not delusional. About Kellogg or my own abilities. I don’t think I can win a direct fight. But… use the mines. I’ll keep him busy. He likes the sound of his own voice. Nick, you get behind him like you’re securing the room, drop the mines and then run like hell as soon as I fire on him. I’ll drive him back and… boom.” 

“Boom,” Piper confirmed. 

“Got it,” Nick said. 

Jeanne pushed the door open and marched down the hallway like it was her final, defiant walk to a firing squad. 

“Okay. You made it,” Kellogg said, his voice crackling from the speaker and bouncing down the hall. “My synths are standing down. Let’s talk.”

Kellogg’s voice pulled her onward like gravity, hurtling her forward until she hit the final door. She pushed the cool metal with a touch of her fingertips and it swung open. 

A man stepped out from behind a massive computer console, synths standing back to flank him, metall hands gripping laser rifles. Something in Jeanne’s chest—perhaps her heart breaking all over again—popped hard when she saw Kellogg’s gaunt, sun-weathered face. Her lip curled at the sight of the scar puckered across one side of his face. That scar was seared more clearly into her memory than Nate’s laugh or Shaun’s first smile.

“So, you found me,” Kellogg said, spreading his arms like he was welcoming her. A bull barrel .44 dangled loosely in one hand. “I’m surprised at how quickly you managed it, honestly. You’re an impressive specimen. Mama yao guai of the century. Of _two_ centuries.” Kellogg managed a half-hearted smile.

Her stare dropped from his face to the piece in his hands. That was the gun Kellogg had raised against her unarmed husband with such cool precision. How _casually_ he’d pulled the trigger, blowing out Nate’s brains with the twitch of a finger.

Now Kellogg held his pistol like it was a toy, some well-loved ragdoll, familiar and comfortable, almost like he didn’t know he was holding it, like it was an extension of his hand. 

Jeanne knew guns and she knew people. The way someone held a gun could tell her more about them than any story, and the way Kellogg nearly fondled the thing told her that he had been holding that gun particular gun for a long, long time. 

It also told her that he was going to kill her with it.

No. He would _not_. He would _not_ destroy her entire family with that gun. 

“Nick,” she snapped. “Secure the room.” She heard a grunt of affirmation from Nick, but didn’t take her eyes from Kellogg.

“Help yourself,” Kellogg said with a shrug. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Cut the chatter,” she snapped. “Where is he?” Her voice cracked slightly with the force of her words. 

“You found me, but I’m afraid you’re a bit late for your son. He’s a bit… older than you probably expected.” 

Jeanne’s heart sank like a stone, finding a place to settle in her gut, resignation taking over. Like the rain, like the end of the world. It was true. 

“I know,” she said, gravel in her voice. “You were in Diamond City with a ten year old boy. Was that Shaun?”

Kellogg smiled, the scar stretching tight across his cheek, eyes dull and… oh _tabarnak,_ why was he looking at her like that, with eyes full of _pity_?

Kellogg nodded, once. “That was Shaun, yes.”

“ _Give him to me.”_

The pity slipped from his eyes and into his voice. “I can’t do that.”

“Why _not?”_

_Because he’s dead. He’s—_

_“_ He’s not here,” Kellogg said. She kept her eyes trained on Kellogg even as she saw a flicker of beige from behind as Nick maneuvered to her right. 

Somewhere behind her, Piper shifted, her gun trained on Kellogg. “Better answer the lady, Kellogg,” she said, throwing her voice to mask whatever Nick was doing behind. Good girl, keeping his attention forward. 

_“_ Where is he?” Jeanne’s voice grew soft and acustory. “Why don’t you have him?”

Kellogg chuckled, a low, throaty huff that made her finger twitch on the trigger, almost enough to fire. 

_Shoot him_. _He killed Nate. Shoot him._

_Don’t shoot him. He knows where Shaun is._

His eyes bored into her, cryogenic freezer cold. His eyes spoke of regrets frozen long ago in favor of a dull apathy that could only be roused with violence. Jeanne knew that look, had seen those same dead eyes staring back at her from soldiers, revolutionaries, and terrorists alike, and damn if the fury in her gut wasn’t tinged with pity for him as well.

No. _No._ She would not love her enemy. That meant _death._ Kellogg killed her husband. Nate, who was so kind and full of passion for doing the right thing, for his words and… for her and— _Not now Nate._

No pity for Kellogg. Not now. Kellogg took her _son_.

“He’s safe,” Kellogg said. His words grew slick with consolation as if he could ease her mind, like the words this man spoke could be anything but poison. “Protected. He’s home. At the Institute.”

A painful spike of hate slammed into her chest with the weight of a freight train. Jeanne brought her gun up. She barely felt herself aim, finger jerking on the trigger. Her shot blew through Kellogg’s unarmed shoulder and he staggered back a step… and then he vanished.

“He’s got a stealth boy!” She hollered as she dove behind an ancient console, breathing hard. 

Drive him back, towards the mines. Blow him all to hell.

_As if you aren’t all in hell already._

Nick bolted back towards her, slamming into the synth units from behind. He drew their fire so Jeanne could ease around the far end of the console. Piper shot another synth that stalked towards her and then Jeanne held her breath and let the chaos roar around her, going still and distant like she was looking at the battle through a high-powered sniper scope, 40 meters out from the action.

She scanned the room, letting her eyes go soft. Stealth boys didn’t make for perfect chameleons. There were tells—visual distortion like the ripple of air above hot asphalt, footprints, signs of passage, and… gunfire.

She managed not to flinch at the sharp report of a .44 and the ricochet of a bullet gone wide. Ten seconds until his stealth boy ran out. She tracked the trajectory of the shot, eyes sweeping towards the left. The air shimmered, distorting the console behind it and she blew her magazine into the ripple of the stealth boy until the pistol clicked. Five seconds. Another shot rang out and pain cut into her thigh as the bullet found it’s mark. Glancing. Blood, buried in the muscle. Nothing vital. She dropped the empty pistol and slung the laser rifle from her back. Where was she in her countdown? 

Two? One.

_There he was._

Kellogg rippled back into existence and she hefted her rifle and fired. The shot went wide and he backed up, not bothering to find cover, bleeding from his shoulder, face blank as he leveled the .44, took aim. Jeanne felt the gun’s sights fix between her eyes like a bullet belonged there all along. She took a breath, ready to dive back behind cover and then the room exploded in a bright blast of air and the stinging hiss of shrapnel.

When the dust cleared, Jeanne found herself distinctly not dead, without a bullet between her eyes. She lay flat on her belly, breathing hard, the console she’d used as cover half destroyed. Blood and dust filled her mouth and nose and she coughed and sputtered and wiped grime from the corner of her eyes. 

“Nick, Piper?” She called out in a dust choked croak. “Report! Everyone O.K.?” 

Somewhere behind her, Piper groaned. “Ugh,” she said. “I’m good Blue. Just some scratches.” 

“I’m alright, kid,” Nick said from somewhere to her left. 

Jeanne rolled to her feet and lifted her rifle. Nothing moved. The room held its breath, dust hanging in the air as if waiting to exhale. She she took a careful step forward. A pool of blood seeped from behind another twisted pile of metal that used to be a massive computer. Another step and she peered around the console to find a mess of pulp and. Kellogg dragged himself across the floor, leaving a slick trail of crimson from the shredded stump where his leg used to be, blown off at the thigh. He crawled forward towards his gun, fingers outstretched and grasping, but Jeanne kicked the hateful thing away from him with a hiss. 

“You’re dead,” she said, training her rifle at his head. 

Kellogg laughed and looked up at her. He smiled, mouth red-smeared and full of blood. “I’ve been dead for years,” he said. “This is just another chance at it. A better one, in some ways. This one I got to see coming.” He spat a glob of red on her boot.

“Enough. You— _killed him._ ” 

“Yeah. Now it’s—” he coughed. “Your turn to... kill… me.” He craned his neck up to stare at her through glassy, dead eyes. The rest of him would catch up with his eyes in a moment, but for now, he smiled. He was amazingly cogent for someone who had just lost a leg. 

“Do it,” he rasped. “Kill me! But mind… the head. There’s some… some stuff in there that you might find interesting. And... ask yourself one thing. Is it what Nate—” 

The sound of Nate’s name in Kellogg’s mouth sent her snarling. “ _Mourons, osti d'épais de marde!_ ”[1] she spat and her finger convulsed on the trigger. 

Kellogg didn’t cry out as she fired on him, but his eyes cleared in that final moment. It was as if all the regrets piled behind the apathy and the cynicism suddenly burst through. Jeanne could almost hear the howl of his demons as they descended on him and tore him apart, even as a bright beam of red ripped through his skull.

Jeanne blinked away the burning light trails and surveyed the carnage. Kellogg lay half in pieces and fully dead. 

The rifle slipped from her numb fingers to clatter on the floor. Her body hummed in time to the pulsing roar in her ears and she stood there for a moment, until nausea broke through the haze and rose in her throat. She staggered forward, slamming a hand to the wall as her stomach heaved and emptied itself. 

_Nate._ No, he wouldn’t have wanted it this way. Not how he would have handled it. He would have been ashamed of her—her stomach heaved again and she rested her forehead on a trembling forearm, braced against the wall. 

“ _Que veux-tu que je fasse?_ ” She whispered. “ _Tu n’es plus ici._ ” [2] 

When she finally pushed off the wall, she found Piper and Nick standing at the other end of the room, half turned away as if they didn’t want to witness her private vomiting session. She cleared her throat and Piper jumped, turning a little too quickly.

“Blue! You okay? That—”

“Yeah,” Jeanne rasped through her raw, burning throat. “Got some water?”

Piper handed her a can of clean water and Jeanne rinsed her mouth and spat before gulping the rest down. 

“Now what?” Nick asked. 

“I don’t know. Good work with the frags, by the way.” Jeanne said and turned to look at Kellogg’s corpse. “Not much left of him.” 

The nausea receded, replaced by a dim curiosity and a creeping feeling of doubt that settled where the contents of her stomach used to be. Maybe she should have kept him alive, if only to see what he meant by having “interesting” stuff in his head. Maybe she shouldn’t have shot him in the head in a cold fury. Maybe she—

 _Maybe_ … she didn’t negotiate with kidnapping, murdering sons of bitches. Especially not dead ones. It was done.

She knelt by the corpse, searching the pockets of his leather jacket and blood soaked pants and found a password chit, ammo, some caps. She unbuckled his metal pauldron, dragged the straps out from under his dead weight and tossed it aside. If she couldn’t bring herself to wear the murdering psychopath’s armor, she could at least sell it. Make some money. Some caps.

“You know,” Nick said. “We still have a major mystery here.”

“Yeah,” Piper said. “No one knows where the Institute is. Or how to get in.”

“I found some passwords. See what you can find in his files.” Jeanne tossed Piper the chit. Piper caught it sharply and sat down sat down at a still-intact terminal, muttering to herself. 

Jeanne turned back to the corpse. Kellogg’s head lolled at an awkward angle, spilling brain matter and bits of skull. Jeanne tilted her head to study the dead man and something metallic flashed amid the pale beige-gray and red bright. 

“What’s this?” Jeanne murmured. She hunched over Kellogg to see an odd bit of circuited metal that curved perfectly around the brain’s cerebral fissure, fine metal filaments wired into the gray matter around it.

Jeanne supposed wishing for some surgical gloves was probably asking a bit much of the post-apocalypse. Names of bloodborne pathogens raced through her head as she puzzled over how best to examine Kellogg’s brain without getting her hands dirty. 

She wasn’t sure if that bit of metal was what Kellogg meant by “interesting,” but it was worth investigating. After a few minutes of searching she found a scalpel and a tray and started to dig into what was left of Kellogg’s brain.

“Aw jesus, Blue! Gross!” Jeanne glanced up to find Piper staring at her from over by the terminal, her mouth open and brows drawn down in a look of absolute disgust. 

“He has weird shit in his brain,” she said. “Metal and wires.” 

“Cybernetics? That’s a synth component,” Nick said from beside her, crouching down. “Looks like our boy Kellogg was a Gen-3.” 

“Huh,” Piper said, her face fading from disgust to curiosity, journalist’s senses no doubt tingling. “Didn’t see that coming.” Jeanne looked away, mouth twisting as she refused to think about how much Piper reminded her of Nate. 

Instead, she probed the curving metal with the edge of her scalpel. She cut the connecting tissue and wires with careful slices of the scalpel, lifted the severed synth component and placed it on the tray.

“Come on, d’you really need to dig around in there?” Piper said.

“I’m not sure. He said something about finding something in his head ‘interesting.’ I didn’t bother to find out what.” 

“Well…” Nick watched her for a moment, his yellow eyes managing to look thoughtful. “There’s this place in Goodneighbor that could probably do something with this mess. The brain’s half destroyed because… well, you shot him in the head, but I think there’s enough for Amari to work with.”

“Amari? Goodneighbor? I’m going to need you to translate for me here, Nick,” Jeanne said. 

“Goodneighbor’s a settlement, northeast of Diamond City. Near the Commons. It’s a hellhole, but—”

Jeanne waved him on. “Okay. I know the Commons. And Amari?”

"Dr. Amari. She’s a brain doctor. Deals in memories. If anyone can get a dead brain to sing, it’s her.”

Jeanne looked up and smiled, feeling a little crooked. “We won’t need the whole brain, then.”

“Good,” Nick said, standing and dusting off his knees. “That thing is a mess. Just scoop up the intact bits and let’s go.” 

“If it’s memories we need, I’ll just have to get the hippocampus.” As she spoke, Jeanne sawed through the corpus callosum with her scalpel, delving deeper into the brain, making a face as she found more wires and strips of circuitry connecting the major areas of the brain like struts or connective tissue. 

Piper made another noise of disgust. “Hippo-whatsit now?”

“Part of the brain that stores and processes memories. I’m hardly a neurosurgeon, but we covered brain anatomy in basic. I think I know what I’m looking… for… ah!”

“You sound _way_ too happy for someone who’s knuckles deep in a brain,” Piper said, still sounding a little weak. 

There it was, the curving bit of brain named because of it’s seahorse shape. It was cased in more circuits, wired up to the the rest of his brain, but the hardware seemed to be distinct from the other synth components, older somehow. 

Jeanne held her breath busy disconnecting the tiny wires before cutting away the surrounding tissue and pulling the little seahorse-shaped bit of brain free.

“There we go,” she said, holding up her prize up for inspection. Wires twined through and stuck out at odd angles, making the bit of brain look like a meaty, cybernetic pincushion. 

She dropped the bloody scalpel into a nearby bin and carefully placed Kellogg’s hippocampus on the old surgery tray. 

Nick’s eyes danced between the tray and Jeanne. “Huh. Killing the man made you yack, but cutting his brain open with a scalpel and your bare hands and you’re not even queasy?” 

“I’m not squeamish about bodies, dead or alive,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of them, in worse states than this. But premeditated murder? Being in the same room as the man who took my son and killed my husband? That doesn't sit well with me.” She delivered the words like a report, her chest going tight as she said the word husband, and son, and killing. Her hands busied themselves with cleanup out of necessity and something to do, wiping away the gore and grime with a water soaked rag.

“That’s… fair,” Nick said He might have looked a little green himself, except that he was still the color of silvery oatmeal. Still, he looked as disgusted as any normal human should look after watching a post-mortem field surgery. A lot could be said for how expressive Nick actually was, despite his lack of a heartbeat or a gag reflex. 

He recovered enough to peer over her shoulder and made a humming sound, tapping his articulated metal fingers on the counter. Jeanne turned the bit of brain over on the tray so Nick could see all sides. 

“I think this is something the doc can use. Those circuits look familiar.”

“Bon,” she said with a sharp nod. “Let’s get going.”

She wrapped the brain augmentation into a scrap of fabric from her now soiled uniform, trying not to dwell on the dismal thought that her only lead on the Institute was a supposed doctor who could extract memories from a dead man’s brain.

“I’ve copied Kellogg’s files to a holotape,” Piper said. “Drop me off in Diamond City? It’s on the way. I’ve got a bed for you, food, and a tub, if you want a soak. The trip to Goodneighbor is going to be a slog.”

Jeanne nodded, but her eyes finally fell on the thing she’d been avoiding since she murdered Kellogg. The big, ugly .44 lay scant inches from Kellogg’s splayed, broken fingers. Jeanne’s own fingers twitched as she stared at it and the pulsing roar started back in her ears, her mouth going dry. 

After a moment lost in the sound of her own racing heart, she bent and picked up the weapon like it was a rotting carcass, shoving down the chill that tried to crawl up her spine. She wiped off the bloody thing on her thigh and buried it in the bottom of her bag. 

Maybe she’d melt it down and launch it into the ocean.

Maybe she’d kill some Institute bastards with it.

Piper and Nick filed out ahead of her and Jeanne took one last look at Kellogg, sprawled in a pool of blood, bits of brain and bone spilling across the filthy floor as he reached for the gun he’d never hold again. 

It was no way to treat the dead, she knew. But then again, Nate was still trapped down in Vault 111, frozen along with the rest of Sanctuary Hill’s former residents, so what did she know?

One thing. She knew one thing. Find a way into the Institute. Find Shaun. 

~~~

**English Translations**

[1] “Die, you stupid fucking piece of shit.”

[2] “What did you want me to do?” “You aren’t here anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m still trying to get a feel for Jeanne. She’s changed a lot since I first started working on the story, but I think I'm finally getting to know her. Honestly I was more worried about getting Deacon right, but Jeanne is the one holding her cards close to her chest. 
> 
> I can’t possibly keep to an update schedule, but I’m writing well ahead of where I’m publishing (for me), so the next two chapters should be up… soon. Whatever soon means. Anyway, there’s stuff. Thanks so much for reading and your comments and kudos!


	5. Schrödinger's Vaultie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter updated on 2/19.

**Deacon**

Deacon's continuing stint without being able to stalk--no, no, not stalk. _F_ _ollow_ \--follow the vaultie proceed in an entirely normal fashion, which is to say it was fairly boring. Except for the  _giant_ fucking blimp that stormed the Commonwealth's skies like a bloated steel-and-helium omen straight from fascist hell. It showed up as he beat it double time along the river, back towards Diamond City. Hopefully to re-find the vaultie.

Deacon wasn't _overly_ concerned about the airship. There'd been whispers of the Brotherhood heading north for a year now, and it looked like they'd turned to the dark side. Nothing ever good came of _we come in peace_. 

 _Take me to your leader_  would have been a bit more polite, but that assumed the Commonwealth had a leader. Which it didn't. So.

Anyway.

Deacon had smaller fish to fry than the Brotherhood of Steel. Namely the vaultie.  

There were three ways it could go, Deacon decided as he skirted another mirelurk nest, wrinkling his nose at both the stink and the philosophical conundrum he was in.

Scenario One: The vaultie was dead. Kellogg killed her, or she died on the way, mauled by a yaoi goi, irradiated to death, or maybe her back broke from all the garbage she liked to carry around. There was definitely potential for a classic “dead in a ditch” scenario. Or… she offed herself because she lost everything, and the world sucked _so damn much._ He wouldn’t blame her.

Scenario Two: Alive. She killed Kellogg, or walked away from the fight, or decided not to find Kellogg, or _couldn’t_ find him. She was out there somewhere, probably looking for the Institute and her son. Or maybe she decided to up and ditch the Commonwealth all together, heading north or west. Or maybe the Institute contacted her, and—

Scenario Three: Dead and/or alive. Schrödinger's Vaultie. He would never find a trace of her again. It happened, people disappeared all the time. She would be consigned to the what-ifs and could-have-beens: never fitting into the Institute puzzle.

Scenario one and two assumed that he would find her, or rumor of her. That wouldn’t be hard, with Conrad ‘wrecking ball’ Kellogg as the main lead. He would simply have to figure out where Kellogg went, assuming she went after him, and hope they made a scene somehow so he could collect rumors or sightings of one or the other.

But scenario three? _That_ assumed that he would not find a trace of her and, as P.A.M. would say, continue to infinitely skew predictive models. Not to mention not knowing the vaultie’s fate would bug the everloving shit out of him for _a least_ the next year.

Right now she was scenario three: Schrödinger's vaultie, and he didn’t want to look in the box.

He ran the scenarios again. She knew Piper Wright and Nick. She was probably safe with Nick and Piper was no slouch either, though careless and impulsive. If either of them were in Diamond City he might have to risk contact with the two snoopiest people in the Commonwealth.

As if his scenarios chased him, Deacon broke his own record for the time it took to get from HQ to the Great Green Jewel. That wasn’t _strictly_ hard to do: he usually traveled slow and easy, collecting news and making friends before vanishing with quick change and a double back to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Most of his time _not_ spent sitting around he spent checking on his tourists and informants, keeping people happy as much as he could, smoothing ruffled feathers and pushing for more and better intel. Sometimes he had to book it and this was one of those times when he followed the river and braved the mirelurks (and there were a lot of mirelurks) to cut his time in half.

Luckily, the trip to HQ and back was a well practiced cakewalk. A short, mirelurk-filled cakewalk. At least he knew what was for dinner for the next… week.

Just five hours and Diamond City’s gates came into view. A quick costume change later and he strolled down the crumbling cement stairs in his DCG uniform just as the guard rotation changed, spine tall and straight, swinging a swatter as if he’d never left.

Trouble was, it seemed like the vaultie had done just that. She was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Nick. Or Piper. The shadows grew long, and Deacon combed Diamond City like he was digging for caps in the sand, and came up empty.

So far she was still in the box.

Deacon let bitter disappointment burn in his chest for an indulgent moment before snuffing it out like a half finished cigarette: not quite satisfying, but occasionally necessary when stuck with a bad habit like smoking, or having expectations.

 _Thought this was gonna be fate, vaultie_.

But no stars aligned. They never did. The machinations the heavens, of fate and the future continued to elude him, so Deacon had to make his own luck.

Dead or alive, she hadn’t been alone last time Deacon saw her. There was Nick Valentine, who Deacon liked to avoid for various personal and professional reasons, and Piper Wright, who was even more nosy than the detective. And a detective and a journalist teaming up? No, thank you very much. The Railroad didn’t need the likes of them sniffing around, even if they were both blissfully unaware that they were useful to Deacon from time to time, almost as much as they were a hindrance.

Well, he couldn’t waltz up to Piper or Nick and start asking questions, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some friends who might know some things about some things.

Deacon did a loop of the bases and approached Publick Occurrences, keeping an eye out for a red coat or thick mane of black hair. When he was sure the reporter was scarce, he pulled off his helmet and waved to Nat Wright.

“Hey Mr. D,” she said as he sauntered over. She stared down at him from her news-pedaling stand, wearing her usual green parka and a frown.

“Hey little sis’,” he said, raising his eyebrows with a smirk.

“I’m _not_ your sister,” she said, giving him a flat look that would have fit better on the face of a little old man protecting his lawn than that of a ten-year-old’s.

“Right you are,” he said, looking properly admonished. “But speaking of family! Your loudmouth _actual_ sister around? Or that lady she was bugging?”

Nat’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Why d’you wanna know?”

Deacon shrugged. He shoved his hands in his pockets and wiggled his fingers, letting the caps there rattle a bit to remind her he would pay. “I’m interested. Not everyday you meet someone like that lady.”

Nat’s shoulders relaxed, coming back down from around her ears. “Piper’s here, somewhere,” she said, tilting her head. “Writing I think. She’s pissed that the lady didn’t give her an interview…The lady says she’s a trader but she’s got a pip-boy. I think she’s from a _vault._ ”

A little flutter of hope stirred in Deacon’s chest, buffering the dispar. Nat wasn’t talking about the vaultie like they might be dead... “Your reporter’s senses are sharper than ever,” he said. “Any idea where the lady went? When was the last time you saw her?”

“That’s gonna cost you,” she said and Deacon could almost see the caps falling behind her eyes. Of all his kid informants, Nat was the toughest nut. It wasn’t that she only cared about caps so much as she had a quick mind for a deal that weighed heavily in her favor.

“Obviously,” he said, pulling out the handful of caps.

She held out a paper to legitimize their exchange and he took it, tucking it under one arm before handing her ten caps, five times the amount he owed for the paper.

Nat grinned. “Easy caps,” she said. She hopped off the newsstand and walked towards the market.

Deacon followed, shortening his strides to keep pace with the half-pint.

“Off to buy something as practical and hard hitting as your paper?”

“Power noodles,” Nat said over her shoulder. “Saving the rest.”

“Not a swatter?” He said, keeping his grin tightly pinned down.

“Already got one,” Nat said.

Deacon chuckled. “Of course you do. So, about your—”

Nat made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Jeez louise, okay! They came back last night, covered in blood and stuff.” She met his eyes briefly as they kept pace and then looked away, her mouth thinning, determined to protect her sister from scrutiny. And maybe there was just a touch of fear there, too.

Deacon kept his face blank, but the flutter of hope turned into a mental cheer. “Okay,” he said, his voice easy despite the sudden flood of possibilities that poured out of the dead and/or alive box. “So, where's the lady?”

The corner of Nat’s eye twitched and she fixed him with a stare. “Why do you wanna know so bad? Is she in trouble?”

Deacon shook his head. “You know I just ask for my own curiosity,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure,” Nat said, her frown deepening into a scowl. “But Piper said to keep quiet about stuff.”

”What about those sneaking lessons?”

Nat stopped in the middle of the street and looked up at him. “Always meet in public. Follow your instincts. Words lie.”

“Right. Caps, beliefs, and ego. And?”

Her mouth twisted, and she threw the last words at him like a challenge. “And you can’t trust everyone.”

“Can you trust me?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and Deacon nodded in approval.

“Good. But what does your instinct say?”

“That you’re okay. Right now, at least. We’re in public. I’ve got caps. You’ve got an ego—”

“Ouch,” he said, and clutched his heart. She’d make a fine Railroad agent one day. If the organization survived that long. “So, about the lady?”

“Fine. She seemed really sad, alright? Piper didn’t tell me, but I heard them talking about you-know-what.” She beckoned him closer, and Deacon leaned down to hear her whisper: “The Manufacturer. And… I think… I think they killed someone. Mr. Valentine, and Piper, and Ms. Jeanne.”

“Really?” Deacon raised his eyebrows as if this was news to him. Nat nodded, and for the first time a touch of fear crept into her eyes.

“I’m trying to help,” he said, holding her gaze. It was a tough thing to do while wearing sunglasses, but she stared at him as if she could see the blue of his irises instead of the silver reflection of his lenses, eyes locked. Maybe she was staring at herself. It’s why he liked the mirrored ones, a trick he’d learned long ago and the reason he wore the damn shades. The only way he could really look someone in the eyes is if they were staring back at themself. “I promise.”

He offered his pinky, and she sighed, her resolve breaking with a slump of her shoulders. She broke their stare and locked their little fingers together instead and gave their hands a little shake before sealing their deal by jerking her finger away.

“Okay. The lady slept at our house last night. She, Mr. Valentine, and her dog left for Goodneighbor this morning. About three hours ago.”

Deacon straightened up and pushed his helmet back on his head, careful not to knock his glasses or his wig askew. Nat continued her march to Power Noodles, and Deacon followed, humming to himself and thinking fast. That meant he’d passed the vaultie on his trip back to Diamond City. If they left three hours ago they’d take at least another two to get to the Commonwealth’s favorite hellhole. That assumed they could move as quickly as Deacon could, which was possible but not likely. Still, they had a head start. Unless they got distracted. Whatever.

Damn. As if he wasn’t _just_ up at HQ, barely a click north of Goodneighbor… He huffed a little laugh as Nat climbed the overlarge stool at the bar like it was a ladder, and waved the robot chef over.

The machinations of fate, indeed.

“You are a Commonwealth treasure,” Deacon informed Nat, dropping a few extra caps on the counter. “Don’t ever change.”

“Yeah. Not planning on it,” Nat said. “I’m charging triple next time. You-know-what’s—the Manufacturer’s been more active the past three months and intel is at a premium.”

“From the mouth of babes,” he said and Nat shook her head at him like he was crazy. “Don’t ever let anyone sell you short.”

Nat rolled her eyes, and Deacon covered his smile by rubbing a hand across his mouth. Rough subble scraped his fingers, reminding him he should stop for a shave on his way to Goodneighbor or his ginger would start to show.

And Deacon ditched Diamond City for what he hoped would be a good, long while, stashing his guard uniform in a cache near Fens Street Sewer. Shrugging into his road leathers, he couldn’t quite shake that smile that stared at the Power Noodles counter.

_Scenario two._

The vaultie was alive and she was giving him a run for his money. He hadn’t moved this fast in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nat is just... so cute?? Wow. 
> 
> Like I said, slowest of burns. Deacon keeps distracting me with his tradecraft and Jeanne has a lot of processing to do. Hope it's not too boring without some direct relationship building between them. I'll get there, pinky swear.


	6. You or Your Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, I read an [amazing little fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/710835) in 2nd person and it stuck with me so hard I had to try it out. I always wanted Kellogg's memories to be more of a mindfuck anyway, so... here we are. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Chapter title is from a Mountain Goats song of the same name.

**Jeanne**

_You walk along bioluminescent pathways, mnemonic wiring that leads you to little bubbles of what might or might not be the truth._

_Memory is funny, you think, as you watch a ten year old Conrad receive the gun that will end your husband’s life at some point in the distant future. Oddly, the place in you that should be full of grief is empty because Nate hasn’t yet been murdered. Instead, you are full of fear of the monster called Conrad’s father, lurking beyond the door. You notice curiosity for the New California Republic recruitment ad you hear on the radio. You feel a creeping, toxic excitement when you look at the gun Kellogg’s mother hands him, and you realize that for the first time in his life Conrad holds something he can control._

_The ley lines lead you to the next bubble of memory, and you know their names immediately. There’s Sarah. There’s Nate. There’s Mary. There’s Shaun. Love swells up in your chest, and it is not yours but Kellogg’s, but it resonates in the four beating chambers of your heart, or it would, if you had a heart, but your body is missing in action and all you can do is follow someone else's life. You know, because Kellogg knows that that he will never be alone again, but you also know this is a lie, because unlike Kellogg, you have seen the future._

_You have a hard time remembering which you is you._

_The blue light of memory flickers. You lose sight of Sarah and Mary, and reality folds and tears, neurological ley lines ripping and fraying like old ropes, like a glitch in tv static. One scene cuts into another like you’re flipping through frenetic channels of violence; violence because Kellogg has no choice, and because he gets paid, and because he enjoys it. Through it all? Void._

_Kellogg stops thinking about Sarah and Mary and you lose them somewhere in the pulsing, tearing iridescence of the ley lines. He doesn't remember them, or doesn't want to, or can’t. You try to do it for him. Sarah, Mary. Nate, Shaun._

_Losing them is when he dies for the first time._

_And then the memories tune you into Kellogg’s long walk down a pipe-lined corridor; a feature film that ends with revenge, and you are stuck by utter familiarity of it. You walk down that hallway in Fort Hagan and Kellogg is the one who dies when you kick open the door._

_A good death, a better death. This one you see coming._

_If dying is an art… You know the line and you abandon it because there is no art to dying, no matter how much practice you get._

_He takes down five first gen synths in under thirty seconds and you wonder how you’re still alive. He looks the same, untouched by time, and you start to suspect that he let you kill him. He joins the Institute, offers his leash to the Institute agent, hoping to find some stability in an entity that is even less attuned to common decency than he._

_Memory shudders again, like a glitch, the flash of a strobe, ley lines unraveling and you feel pitched, driven towards some forgone conclusion._

_You are behind Kellogg in Vault 111, the chamber lined with frosted sarcophagi. If you had knees you would fall to them, and if you had feelings that belonged to you alone you might scream. Instead you watch, and wait as you do your—as Kellogg does his job._

_Nate dethaws and when the pod opens he looks different, not as handsome. He looks unfamiliar and average, like any random man, holding a baby, a tiny, mewling thing. You almost don’t know Nate but somehow you know Nate’s and Shaun’s lungs are filled with the same thick mucous yours were filled with just two weeks ago, just..._

_Nate chokes out a pleading question; he thinks they are free, that perhaps the danger of war and radiation has passed, enough time has—oh, the memory but not the feeling of it matches your own, perfectly—they try to take Shaun. Nate’s damp brown hair flops over his gray-tinged hazel eyes, and you feel nothing. Kellogg raises his gun and the shot rings out sharp and hollow in the echoing vault chamber. Nate slumps, dead, delivering Shaun into the arms of an Institute scientist in a hazmat suit._

_Finally you feel something. Regret. Kellogg can’t help but think of Sarah, and Mary._

_“God damn it,” Kellogg says, and then he approaches you. You follow, peering over Kellogg’s shoulder to watch yourself pound on the glass of the cryo chamber, annoyance mounting. It’s Kellogg’s feeling, not yours._

_You look unfamiliar as well. Like any average woman, small and pale, shuddering as you scream and rage against the glass._

_He raises his fist to the red button that will let you out, and hesitates. How different the world be if he had let you out._

_His voice echos, not coming from Kellogg’s mouth but from all around the empty chamber of the vault: “At least we have the backup.”_

_The memory snaps, a crackling bioluminescent blue. The memory feels like hands smoothing the wrinkles from a crumpled piece of paper so violently it tears, bleeding light, and then another pathway lights up and you wonder who’s story this is, really._

_Another stage, set and ready for you. A ten year old child sits on the floor. Affection wells up in you but it doesn't belong to you, and if you had a stomach you’d feel sick to it. Kellogg cares for Shaun, he loves… Mary, he misses Mary._

_Shaun looks well cared for, clean. He’s thin and small but healthy. He has Nate’s eyes, gray-tinged hazel, guileless. He is ten. Why is he ten? How can he be ten?_

_So much lost time._

_A man barges through the front door wearing sunglasses and a gray leather duster buttoned to the collar. The room chills and you get angry at the man—the synth. His name… His title? His label... is Courser X6-88. He hands Kellogg a file, says he has a new job, one that isn’t Shaun. A scientist, Brian Virgil, has defected from the Institute._

_Shaun seems oblivious, unconcerned about the two killers nose to nose and glowering at each other, and then the courser beckons to him._

_Shaun asks if he’s going to see his family now. But Nate is dead, and you aren’t there. Shaun has a new family and the thought would send shudders through you if it were your own._

_Shaun bounces up from his spot on the floor, leaving the comic you find in Kellogg’s apartment days ago. Days… later? Time means nothing._

_Blue light and a sound somewhere between a gunshot and the snap of a tree branch shatters the quiet tension in Kellogg’s apartment. The ringing sound is the subsequent vacuum created by the absence of two bodies being filled with a greedy, vicious snap of air._

Jeanne gasped, thrown viscerally from the tangle of time and identity into the weight of truth and her own self. She choked another breath and sat up so fast she hit her head on the television screen with a sharp crack and a yelp of pain, and fell back into the deep recline of the memory lounger, defeated by her own body.

Someone—Amari—spoke in that doctor-voice Jeanne had used a thousand times before to coax the injured and the dying. Something about taking it easy, about long term side effect and monitoring. Jeanne followed the voice, coming back slowly, rubbing her throbbing forehead. She clung to the pain as a reminder that she wasn’t wandering a dead man’s memory, but sitting in the basement of a memory theater in the real world… at the end of the world. It was becoming easier to think of the post-war world as real, now that she’d seen Kellogg’s version of it. Context, history, lives lived. Besides, any other reality besides a murdering psychopath’s was preferable. Even if he wasn’t… wasn’t a psychopath. Not really. Just another broken down warrior, used and abandoned.

Someone wrapped their hand around her arm, cautious until Jeanne’s reached out to grip cloth, smooth and worn and real beneath her shaking fingers.

She swung her legs over the side of the lounger and Nick pulled her up, steadying her as she took her first steps, his eyes yellow and concerned. This close, the cracks in his face allowed her glimpses into his hollow body, the pole of his metal spine that held up his head, the neat order of wires and circuits that gave him life. She was in awe of him for a moment, and she managed a smile. It fet foreign on her face, but she owed him now. Twice over. He had done that for her, allowed the mind of another man into his own so she could walk through it like she was picking daisies. Or someone was picking daisies _for_ her. Still, did it matter if she had the information?

“Thank you,” she whispered, and he squeezed her arm and smiled back.

“Did you find what you need?” Amari asked.

“I—” she took another breath, and a step, and let go of Nick. His hand remained on her shoulder. It was the one encased in that silvery polymer and not the one of naked metal, she noticed. He never touched anyone with his mental hand.

“They teleport,” she said, grimacing like she she had to deliver a bad line from _The Silver Shroud._

People couldn’t _teleport_. But they couldn’t walk through a dead man’s memories, or live in cryogenic stasis for 200 years either. Jeanne’s scepticism was no longer holding much water.

Amari hummed. “Teleport? You’re sure?”

Jeanne nodded and made for the couch, sinking down with a groan as she waited for her knees to stop shaking. Things didn’t quite add up, and for a dizzying moment Jeanne didn’t see see point of trying to find her son. If Shaun was ten he wouldn’t remember her. His home was with the Institute. If she rescued him now, _she_ would be the kidnapper. She closed her eyes against the thought.

The people who had Shaun _killed Nate._ She would not leave him in their hands, no matter how accustomed the child was to the Institute and whatever _family_ he’d found.

Nick stood nearby, looking shaken as she felt. “I saw it too,” he said. “No one’s ever been able to find an entrance into the Institute.”

Amari straightened up, her eyes glittering. “Then there _is_ no entrance. It all makes sense! But we don’t know anything else. How does it work? Where do we go next?”

“I have the answer to that, too,” Jeanne said. “Kellogg’s next task was to kill a defected Institute scientist name Virgil. The… courser who visited told him to go to the Glowing Sea. Kellogg seemed not to like that.”

Amari barked a laugh. “No, he wouldn't. The Glowing Sea is ground zero, where the bomb fell.”

Jeanne tipped her head back to rest it against the back of the couch. “Of course it is. So… radiation? Monsters? A toxic wasteland?”

“That’s about the size of it, yes,” Amari said.

“No better place to hide,” Nick offered, and Amari hummed in agreement.

“Then we’ll go,” Jeanne said, her mind racing. Ground zero meant major radiation, worse than she’d seen here. The army taught her that limiting exposure to radiation was the best prevention. And that meant she had a lot of work to do. “But we better start preparing now. Power armor is radiation resistant. That means a trip back to Sanctuary. I’ll need to make some caps, buy some anti rads, build up a survival kit.”

“And you’ll want a big gun,” Nick offered. “There’ll be deathclaws.”

Jeanne groaned, and the mostly healed scar that now lined the side of her face gave a sympathetic twinge.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Nick said, offering her a hand up. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. “Rads don’t affect me one bit. I’m with you.”

“May I keep Kellogg’s brain?” Amari asked. “I want to run some tests, see what else I can find out about this device.” The doctor had already moved on to the scientific implications of the whole ordeal, and Jeanne ducked her head with a crooked smile. The world might have been destroyed, but if someone had invented teleportation, created what appeared to be sentient synthetic life… and if this woman was still fascinated with the human brain, maybe things might not be as broken as she thought. “I definitely don’t want it,” Jeanne said.

“Maybe he can do some good to people dead, if I can learn more about—” Amari paused, rubbing the back of her neck. She cleared her throat. “About memory creation and storage. It might help a great deal of people.”

“Yes,” Jeanne said. “The brain is yours. And good riddance.”


	7. Fuzzy Bastard Strikes Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: All views herein expressed regarding other companion characters are not necessarily the views held by the author, but of Deacon, the snarky little shit.
> 
> If anyone is interested in what swearing in Quebecois sounds like, I have a fun video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBB6_l0FlRo

Lurkin' by the amazingly talented [mitzyblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MitzyBlue).

~~~

**Deacon**

Light played off the reflective lenses of Deacon’s sunglass, keeping the worst of the memory lounger strobes from drilling into his eyeballs. He kept his head facing forward, fixed on the TV screen, his body languid as if he were caught in the trance of his most compelling memories. But nothing played on the screen, just static snow devoid of pattern. He had a more compelling show to watch than a pay-by-the-hour nostalgia tour that would leave him wrung out and shaking for the next week.

Deacon let his eyes drift sideways to train on the vaultie’s back. She stood braced in a wide legged stance, hands clasped behind her back so her knuckles shone white. She wore that same ill-fitting uniform, now dirty with radiation dust and blood stains, ripped in places where she presumably took fire. Deacon could barely see Nick Valentine from over her shoulder where he sat on a plush red couch. 

“Doin’ alright?” Nick asked. “That was—”

“It was hell,” the vaultie finished. “Welcome to my life. And… Kellogg’s.”

“Believe me, I’m familiar with having memories that aren’t mine. Pre-war Nick’s got a lotta feelings that I don’t hold much by these days.”

The vaultie’s head bobbed in agreement. “It must be strange, living someone else’s life. I spent about a week thinking I was special.” She huffed a laugh. “Then I met this pre-war detective who got a hardware upgrade—”

Deacon heard Nick hum, a sound somewhere between pleased and sceptical. “Hardly an upgrade—” 

“Well, Nick Valentine survived the apocalypse, didn’t he?” 

“Yeah, I guess he did.” 

Deacon saw Nick shift in his seat, a flicker in the corner of his eye. The vaultie laid her truth out thick and raw, and Deacon admired her for it. Must be nice for her to connect with someone who knew how much the world had lost. 

The vaultie wasn’t done. “What about pre-war ghouls? They lived with this—actually lived every moment—for 200 years. That doesn’t make cryo seem bad by comparison.” Her shoulders drew up towards her ears, uncertainty making her back go round and soft like her voice.

“You seem to be doing an okay job of it.”

“I’m coping. Listen, Nick. I think you should—” She took a deep breath, and her voice steadied. “I think you should go back to Diamond City. I need some time alone. To think.” 

Nick stared at her for a few moments, like he was trying to decide if he should be offended. Then he cleared his throat, one of his more endearing 'I’m almost organic' affectations. 

“If you’re sure…” 

“I’m sure. I need to sort through some things. Take a breath, prepare for the Glowing Sea. I'll come find you again when I'm getting ready to go.”

Deacon almost choked. The… Glowing Sea? Was she _insane_? Whatever had come out of her visit to Amari had clearly given her another, even more suicidal direction to follow than hunting Kellogg. 

“Goodneighbor’s a rough town, kid. You saw how Mayor Hancock handles infractions.”

“Yes,” she said. “I _did_ notice the extrajudicial stabbing. And a general air of benevolent dictatorship.” 

“Hancock’s not a bad sort, if you give him a chance. He might even be able to help you out. See if he’s got a lead on some Rad-X or Radaway.”

 _That… wasn’t actually a bad idea,_ Deacon thought _._ Hancock played a tough game, but if Deacon set him up just right… 

“I’ll ask.” 

“When’s the last time you got some sleep? Something to eat? I don’t do either of those things myself, so it’s hard for me to remember when you organic folks need some down-time.”

“Yeah. I’ll get some rest. Maybe get a drink. Take in the local flavor.”

“All right, kid. I’ll leave you to it. Stay safe out there.” 

“Thanks, Nick. You too. No hard feelings, right?” 

The duo walked out together, and Deacon let out the breath he’d been holding. When he was sure they weren’t coming back he hauled himself out of the memory lounger and headed in the opposite direction, towards the basement.

A voice swanned out as he passed the back of the main room. “Have a nice time, sweetheart?” Irma sprawled on her devan, all feathers and stale cigarettes.

“Always do, ma’am,” he said with a tug on the brim of his hat, ever the affable drifter. “Got a bit of a headache though.”

“Go on down, love. I’m sure the good Doctor can clear that _right_ up.”

Deacon sauntered past her little velvet-wrapped stage but once he was out of Irma’s line of sight, his hat came off and his whole posture changed. His he squared his shoulders, body energizing as he put on his real mask, the one that he only allowed committed Railroad agents to see.

He bounced down the stairs and paused a moment to peer into the good doctor’s lab, where he found Amari at a long counter, labeling a jar which held a meaty bit of something stuck through with wires, suspended in yellow fluid. 

“You know, I love it down here,” he said. “I can feel the science just _oozing_ all over the place.”

Doctor Amari didn’t even bother to look up. “What are you doing here?”

“D’you have a geiger counter?” he asked, and dropped himself onto the middle of the couch. 

Amari looked up and met the lenses of his sunglasses with a hearty eyeroll. “Mine’s in the shop,” she intoned. 

Satisfied, Deacon slung his arms across the back of the couch and tilted his head towards the jar. “What’s that?”

“It’s a sample,” she said, as if it were obvious. Deacon supposed it _was_ obvious, but he never let the opportunity to appear oblivious pass him by. 

“Doesn't have anything to do with the lady and the detective who were just here, does it?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” she said, her diction clear, brooking no argument. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

That would be a _yes_. 

“A new patient? You can keep the dirty details, but I couldn’t help overhearing the name Kellogg. He’s been one of the manufacturer’s top dogs for the past ten years or so. What’s Jeanne got to do with him?” 

Amari paused, and her eyebrows flicked upward at the use of the vaultie’s name. 

_Names… names were magic_ , Deacon thought. 

Amari wavered, and then put the jar down with a click of glass on laminate. “Is she a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, we go way back.”

Amari’s eyebrow continued to climb. “In her case, way back either means two weeks ago, or 200 years ago. She’s pre-war.”

Deacon whistled. “ _Fascinating,”_ he said. So Amari knew some of her story. “Any news?”

“I think we’ve had a major breakthrough regarding Institute security.”

“Yeah?” 

“They use teleportation. There is no entrance.”

The news eclipsed even his vaultie ponderings. _Teleportation._ Deacon hummed as several long fretted-over puzzle pieces fell into place. _Escaped synths wandering alone and lost, as if they fell from the sky._ _Barbara disappearing for a few hours every now and then. How he would find her dazed, missing time, calling for him as she wandered home..._ In those early days after—his brain hardly stumbled over the thought anymore—after her murder, Deacon wondered if she’d been wrong-wired, her circuitry crossed… but all that lost time…

_Teleportation._

He sat impassively for a moment, letting vindication and fury slide down into his gut to form a curious brew in his stomach, and then he forced himself to smile.

“Desdemona is going to have kittens _and_ puppies over the news,” he said. _And Tom might actually lose his mind._ Of course, Deacon would need some proof _._

_And that’s where you come in, vaultie._

“I’m sure you heard enough of the rest upstairs,” Amari said, her mouth a disapproving line.

“Naw, I was busy reliving my glory days in the Mojave. Didn’t hear a thing. Speaking of my glory days, you wouldn’t have any anti-radiation meds just lying around?”

“Are you experiencing radiation poisoning?” Amari’s eyes narrowed in that classic doctor way as she tried to detect his symptoms. 

Deacon rubbed his arms through his coat. “Yeah. It’s pretty bad… but I’d rather treat myself. I’ll take a few doses in a doggy bag. Bill me through the mail, along with whatever intel you need to pass on to the shop. They aren’t going to believe the teleportation stuff if it’s just coming from me. They might not even believe _you_.” 

Amari sighed and gestured towards the locked cabinet that contained a stash of medical supplies reserved for Heavies and synth runaways. “Help yourself,” she said. 

~~~

Hancock’s inscrutable gaze was as oily as Deacon’s favorite black wig. The ghoul’s black eyes made the sick slide from Deacon to the crate sitting on the floor of the mayor's office as the Old State House creaked and settled around them. Deacon wondered when the building would finally give up the ghost. The building was called “old” _before_ the war, so it was really just a matter of time before the whole thing collapsed around Hancock’s withered ears. 

Hancock’s ruined voice rasped when he spoke. “So you’re just… givin’ me all this? And I’ll know what t’do with it when I know? That ain’t how I operate… _Lex_.” 

Deacon shrugged. “You’re a smart ghoul, Hancock, and this ain’t anything out of the usual. I trust you to figure it out.”

“I don’t mind turnin’ a blind eye when you or your people roll through town, but handin’ out favors without reason gets a ghoul a reputation. Let’s say I don’t like where this deal’s goin’ once it gets here? ” Hancock spoke like he’d taken a pull off a particularly fine spliff and blew the words out in a cloud of disrespect. 

“Oh, I _promise_ you’ll like where it’s going, Hancock,” Deacon said. “The deal will come to you, no effort required.” Deacon hitched at his black vest and brushed a fleck of dirt from the front of his formerly white button-down shirt. “Here’s fifty caps to keep where this coming from quite, all right? You had this shit laying around. Maybe do a trade for it to make it seem real businesslike. Favor for favor. Clear out some muties, cull some raiders, scout that gallery that’s been giving you trouble, or—”

“Alright, yeah. I got a job or five needs doing. I’m for the people and all, but this ain’t no charity.” 

Deacon blinked behind his glasses, nodding along with Hancock’s little lies. He knew full well that the Mayor had crash space up in the attic for lost travelers and down-on-their luck families. The mayor fed them, found them jobs and places to live. Favors on favors, without any expectation of reciprocity. Some tyrant. 

Of course, Hancock hadn't gotten where he was today without being a shrewd businessman who played a mean game of politics, but as hearts went, his was blatantly bleeding. 

Hancock flipped the crate lid open with a toe and inspected contents. Ten bags of Rad-Away and three bottles of Rad-X lay nestled in some dirty hay, all swiped from Amari. A handful of stimpaks were Deacon’s own personal contribution. Desdemona and Carrington would kill him if they ever found out he was funneling Railroad supplies to an outsider, but Amari was clever enough to cover with some bullshit about a “supply shortage” if the jig was ever up. Amari put up with enough of Deacon’s bullshit to know that he didn’t actually do things on a whim or without good reason. Most of the time. Probably.

Hancock sorted through the anti-radiation drugs, no doubt looking for something a bit more recreational. “Not even the good stuff,” he said, and huffed a wistful sigh. “None of this shit’ll do anything for a me.” 

Deacon shrugged. “That’s why you’re the perfect ghoul for the job. No bleed-off from the handler.”

The little stash should make a heroic start to the obscene amount of anti-rad meds the vaultie would need if she was going to survive the Glowing Sea.

Then again, two weeks out of the vault and she’d already murdered Kellogg, befriended the only unabashedly out-and-proud synth in the Commonwealth and helped restart the Minutemen. He was starting to think she didn’t actually need help. 

She was getting the hang of things faster than he expected her to. Was she one of those quick learners, or had she been some pre-war badass? The vaultie was too good a shot to have picked up a gun for the first time when she stepped out of Vault 111. She was too good a scout to never have spent time in the wilderness. She knew her way in and out of a suit of power armor. Why the different names? Did her power armor know-how come pre-installed, or was she simply really good at figuring shit out as she went?

“Great speech earlier, by the way,” Deacon said, letting his thought run out of steam. Too many questions, and none of them particularly applicable to getting her set up to fight the Institute. “Really inspired me to keep a better eye on my friends.”

“You ain’t got any friends, Lex,” Hancock said, offering Deacon a cigarette to seal the deal. 

Deacon smiled and took the smoke, lighting up as he let Hancock’s friendly antagonism roll off of him with a shrug. “Won’t be too difficult, then.” He turned to go.

Hancock hummed behind him. “Hey, Lex! This ain’t got anything to do with that vaultie that rolled up with Nicky, does it?” 

Deacon looked over his shoulder. “That new dame? Why would you think that?”

Hancock blew a smoke ring and peered at Deacon through the circle of blue haze. “Nicky stopped by asking if I had any anti-rads to spare just a few hours ago, is all. For the vault dweller.”

“There’s been a supply shortage, what with all the rad storms of late. I’m not surprised. Soft thing like that’s gonna need all the help she can get.”

“Those vault types don’t stand up well to rads, that’s for sure.” The ghoul crossed his arms and Deacon could feel those slick black eyes follow him all the way out the door and down the stairs.

He took the stairs two at a time and let himself out of the back and into the squalid Goodneighbor night, trying not to inhale too deeply of the the charming olfactory bouquet of old piss and garbage. 

Then, he waited. 

Barring any more pressing Railroad business, he could stalk the vaultie for as long as it took to herd her to the right people who could help her find the Institute, and by finding the Institute, help the Railroad.

She wasn’t hard to keep track of. The vaultie seemed to create a wake of gossip everywhere she went: _New girl. Hancock has his eyes on her. Caused shit with Finn and he died for it. Friends with Nick Valentine. Too clean to be from anywhere but a vault._

Now alone but for her dog, she explored Goodneighbor much the way she explored Diamond City, slowly and thoroughly getting the lay of the town. Through it all the locals tossed unwanted comments at her, or made comments about her, ogling everything from her Pip-Boy to her ass until her face grew stony, the corners of her mouth and her eyes tight with what Deacon thought might be carefully repressed rage. 

Eventually she succumbed to one of Goodneighbor’s major laws of social gravity, and descended into the in Third Rail. Deacon didn’t follow. With only one way in and out of the bar and too many familiar faces, it was one of his least favorite places in the Commonwealth to ply his trade.

As he waited for the vaultie to resurface, Deacon felt the tingle of a radiation storm build on the horizon. The storm would roll in slow, bringing rain and rads, sending people to ground. The residents of Goodneighbor stirred as the sensed the impending storm, even the strung-out junkies looking for places to hunker down.

The vaultie emerged from the Third Rail as the sky started to tinge green. A thin, lanky young man followed in her wake. 

_I’ll be damned,_ Deacon thought. He’d heard some rumors of a merc named MacCready, yes _that_ MacCready holing up in the Third Rail. The kid was no longer the ten-year-old mayor of Little Lamplight, but a Commonwealth mungo. Deacon heard that he was a better-than-decent shot and had some trouble with the Gunners, but damn, he must not be any older than 22. Another puppy added to the vaultie’s pack, following on her heels.

At least Dogmeat was nowhere to be seen as MacCready took a seat on a nearby bench, looking bored as hell while the vaultie traded scrap and chatted with Daisy about books and libraries. Deacon wandered closer to catch their conversation.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the vaultie said, offering Daisy a little smile as she tucked a mostly intact book into her empty bag, too fast for Deacon to catch the title. 

A moment later swerved out of the shop and Deacon’s heart lurched as she got too close.

“Sorry,” she murmured as they bumped shoulders, sparing him no more than a glance. 

“Nooo problem,” he drawled back. He shouldn’t say anything more, but he was _dying_ to talk to her. “What a day, huh?” He glanced up at the angry sky. “Rad storm’s coming in soon. Better find a place to hunker down.” 

He could taste the tang of ionization on the air, the back of his throat coating with that sick, unnatural feeling that demanded he put as much shelter between him and the open sky as possible. 

“Indeed,” she said, glancing up as bursting sparks of yellow started to dust down. She glanced at MacCready and jerked her head, summoning him. MacCready peeled himself from the bench and sauntered over. 

“Thanks for the warning,” she said to Deacon.

“Haven’t seen you around,” he said. _Get her plans, straight from her mouth._ “Staying at the Rexford?”

MacCready loomed over the vaultie’s shoulder, which wasn’t actually hard to do. This close, Deacon got a real sense of her height: a scant few inches above five feet, with a short-limbed, stocky build. MacCready had a few inches on her, but Deacon was the tallest, which made staring down his nose through his glasses easier. 

“Only place in town,” the vaultie said. 

He nodded. “True enough. Well. Stay rad, sister” he said, backing away.

Good christ. _Stay rad? Really?_ Deacon barely managed to keep his wince internal.

 _Don’t say anything to the mark that picks you out as more than average._ That meant no jokes. People paid attention to funny. 

He tried to walk away, fuming at himself, but a little sound stopped him dead in his tracks.

He turned to find the vaultie grinning at him, giving her head a little shake of disbelief. Her gaze dropped to the ground as chuckle bubbled up from her chest to rock her shoulders. She laughed like she couldn’t quite contain it but tried anyway, punctuated by a sharp inhale of breath, and damn if that reluctant grin didn’t transform her face in a way he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. That smile was goddamn weaponized. She looked up again and hit him with the full force of it, like the spotlight Des used to disorient and interrogate new inductees before she let them sign on to the Railroad. 

Deacon swallowed hard, only vaguely aware that his mouth had gone dry. His eyes widened behind his sunglasses, the corner of his mouth curling in a tiny echo of her smile.

“Stay… rad? Oh…” She swallowed down another wry chuckle, her smile fading into a barely contained smirk until she hiccoughed another little laugh. “Like I have any choice.” She tried to school her face into seriousness, but a little spark still danced in her eyes. 

Well, the little spark danced until her eyes narrowed at him, her head tilting to the side in evident curiosity. 

_Uh-oh._

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” Her head tilted to the side, eyes narrowed. 

Deacon snapped his mouth shut and relaxed his shoulders. “Maybe. I drift.”

“No, it’s—”

Thunder rumbled overhead, and several geiger counters began a chorus of gentle warning clicks. 

“We gotta find shelter, boss,” MacCready said. 

Deacon took the momentary distraction to flee. 

_Complete rookie move there, Dee._ The thought echoed in his head just like thunder rumbled above it, overwhelming, telling him to run. A sick, yellow-green bolt of lightning forked across the sky as he slipped through the back entrance of the Memory Den to wait out the storm. 

At least the storm gave him time to think. No, thinking was bad. Strategizing was better. Deacon hunkered down in one of the little dressing rooms in the Memory Den, and laid out his next move.

So far, no one had pointed her towards the Railroad that he was aware of. Perhaps Nick or Piper had recommended she find them, but everything else in the Commonwealth would convince her that the Railroad was a weak shadow at best, and at worst, perpetrators of the Synth threat. Patent pending. 

So, how to get her on board?

He could recruit her the old fashioned way, just by talking to her. Get her set her up as a tourist doing some recon, and then have her run enough missions that Des would be impressed enough to sign her on as a Heavy. That was making a lot of assumptions about her willingness and ability to run a bunch of random missions, though.

He could help her find more leads on the Institute without having to talk to her. He had intel, lots of it. Courser sightings, synth escape routes, tourists she could cross paths with. And still Des wouldn’t be impressed. The aftermath of the Switchboard made her cagey and gunshy, pulling back instead of pushing forward. 

Deacon felt the pull of lost time pulling the Railroad down into irrelevance. Their number was going to be up, and soon, unless he could flip the script. He needed—

Two things needed to happen soon. Now. Yesterday. 

One: the vaultie needed to start looking for the Railroad. 

Two: Desdemona needed to be impressed enough with the vaultie to onboard her without the usual walkabout. 

He needed her to put on show, display her natural ability for survival and not taking any shit. She needed to wow Desdemona enough that their fearless leader would make a decisive decision for once in her life.

Not that Deacon was one to be critical of indecision, but _someone_ had to do something, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him. 

Deacon popped a holotape into the Pip-Boy he hadn't yet returned to HQ. Des’s voice filled the little room, and at the end of her manifesto, Deacon hit record. 

He cleared his throat, letting a smile color his voice. “See? Told you that you didn’t have to worry. This is… uh… us. Finding you. Follow the Freedom Trail.” 

He stopped recording and popped the tape, slipping it into his pocket. Then he popped a rad-x and headed to the Rexford. 

Several hours later, the vaultie and her little crew dragged themselves back into Goodneighbor with lead-lined boots. The wake of Hancock’s little assignment to scout out Pickman Gallery left them looking less like they’d done some recon and a bit more like they’d seen some heavy combat. 

Shrouded in a fine grime of sweat, blood, and gunpowder, it was hard to tell if pain or exhaustion that made the vaultie’s eyes tight at the corners. MacCready’s left forearm was neatly wrapped in a bandage, blood seeping through to stain the dressing red. The vaultie had a bloody nose, stemmed with what looked like a bit of cloth shoved up one nostril.

Deacon sat on his favorite bench outside of Daisy’s shop, dressed as Lex in his black vest and dirty button up shirt. He took a long, slow drag of his cigarette and exhaled with a sigh. He let his head fall back to stare up at the overcast evening sky and pretended to stretch to cover his movements as he tracked the vaultie’s trajectory across the main yard in front of the shops. 

The vaultie’s head swung from side to side, scanning her environment as if she expected to get jumped. Even from across the courtyard Deacon could see exhaustion and disgust inform every line of her body. He wondered what she’d found at Pickman Gallery. Nasty tales, coming out of that place.

Her head swung towards him, and she caught Deacon’s eyes, or perhaps he caught hers. His heart dropped into his stomach and started slamming into vital organs. The pair of sunglasses he wore took some the heat from that eye contact, but time slowed to a crawl as she brushed a wayward lock of hair from her eyes, tucking it back behind her ear. Her frown deepened slowly and Deacon forced himself to raise his cigarette to his lips, the weight of his arm dragging the motion on forever. She blinked, chin raising as she considered him. 

Inhale. _One… two… three…._ Look away. Exhale in a cloud of smoke. 

When he looked back, he found her kicking open the door of the Old State House, and time resumed its normal, linear progression. 

Deacon took another drag of his smoke, this one shakey.

 _Getting too close, pal,_ he thought. _Confirm that she gets the holotape and ease the hell off._

She got a bead on him last night, all because of a dumb joke. He never used to be this careless… not unless he was getting too comfortable with his current face or his personas. Maybe it was time to mix things up a bit. Once he got the vaultie to sign on with the Railroad he could get a face swap and pretend this whole thing never even happened. Fresh start and all that. He had a few of those banked by now, didn’t he? 

_Come on, vaultie… We’re runnin’ out of time here,_ he thought. She was too much of an attention grab, too consuming. He needed her _now,_ so he could go back to his regularly scheduled boredom. He was neglecting his tourists. He should be checking out Randolph. He should be doing pretty much anything but sitting around Goodneighbor hoping she’d find his planted intel. And if she found it, hoping she’d follow it. 

There she was again, walking out the the Old State House with a familiar crate in her arms, MacCready and Dogmeat on her heels. Deacon detached himself from the bench and eased around the corner, watching them disappear into the Rexford. 

“I still say that guy told us to go get irradiated,” MacCready was saying as he pushed open the door half a minute later. “Things don’t always mean what they used to.” 

Did that mean… Did MacCready know she was pre-war? 

“ _Ostie_ ,” she said. Deacon didn’t know the word but it sounded like another curse. “Would you drop it? It’s been an entire _day_. I told you, the word ‘rad’ used to mean ‘cool.’”

Oh, dear god. They were talking about his joke.

MacCready whined. “Maybe it an Atom Cats thing?”

Deacon kept his eyes on Dogmeat sniffing around the lobby. He was ready for this eventuality and dropped handful of jerky on the floor, flicking it under the couch with his boot and strolling away. The dog’s head shot up and he trotted over to Deacon and sniffed his hand. Deacon went still, holding his breath and then the dog trotted past him, going down on his front legs to stick his head under the couch.

“What are Atom Cats?” The vaultie asked, her voice floating across the room.

“Jesu—uh, jeez, I keep forgetting. They’re a gang… thing. Obsessed with power armor and pre-war music and poetry shi—crap?”

“I could teach you to swear in French, you know,” she said, and Deacon saw the back of MacCready’s neck go red. 

_French_. She spoke French. Deacon had only ever skimmed some dusty old French novels without understand the words; he had never heard it spoken. The language didn’t sound like he imagined it would. 

“That’s—uh, is that what you speak to your dog?” 

She nodded, half a cocked smile spreading across her face. 

“Canadian French,” she said. “Quebecois.”

“Canada? That’s like… another country. Up north. No wonder you’re weird.” 

She smiled again, rolling her eyes.

The vaultie was more chatty with MacCready than Deacon had seen her before. Perhaps her prior reservedness was nothing more than shock, which now seemed to be wearing off. Cracks were forming as she sloughed off the the old hurts and walked into new ones. 

MacCready himself might be a factor in her loosening up. His straightforward apathy made him a better confidant than the nosy reporter from Diamond City or the heart-o-gold, hat-wearing Minuteman back in Sanctuary, simply because the merc didn’t care about much of anything besides caps. 

Besides, there were some people who emerged from trauma unable to accept kindness. MacCready's apathy and even Hancock’s callous flamboyance were probably easier to face than the the output of sympathy from someone like Valentine or Piper Wright. She’d sent Nick packing, after all.

That’s when Dogmeat managed to liberate his snack from under the couch and swallow it whole. He barked once, and bounded towards Deacon. _Shit, shit...._ He was too slow. The dog skidded to a stop and reared up to plant his muddy paws on Deacon’s chest, leaving two big prints on his shoulders and he backpedaled. Dogmeat barked again and chased him, tail wagging furiously.

 _Fuzzy bastard strikes again._ The thought was calm and slow even as Deacon’s whole cover slipped and started to unravel around him, raising the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

The vaultie spun and frowned at her animal. “Dogmeat! _Non! Venez ‘ci!_ ” She shoved the crate of anti-rads into MacCready's hands and bore down on her dog so she could drag him away.

“ _Mauvais chien_ ,” she said, but Dogmeat whined and braced his legs against her tugging on the thick collar around his neck. “So sorry!” She looked up, shaking her head. “He never—” Her eyes narrowed as she saw Deacon trying to make his escape.

“You!” The vaultie let go of her dog and pointed at him. “You’ve been _following me._ ”

Deacon had the wherewithal to look stunned, eyebrows flying skyward. “What? Woah now, sugarbomb…” 

She slammed into him so hard it hurt when his back hit the wall, the rest of his assuagement cut off by the sharp press of her forearm against his throat. The room erupted in shouts of “fight” or “knock it off” and other unenterable jeers, and the vaultie snarled, tiny and ferocious. She had a surprisingly long reach for someone so small. 

“Jesus lady!” He gaped a little, working his mouth like a fish floundering out of water. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

She shook her head, jaw set as she pressed down on his throat. He saw the crust of blood and a faint bruise around her nose and the raw, angry line of her two-week old head injury, before his eyes flicked back to hers. “That’s what I’d like to know,” she growled. “Who are you? _Did the Institute send you_?” 

Everyone in the room collectively shut their mouths at the word _‘Institute,’_ like she’d uttered a horrific curse. 

Deacon started to slip down the wall, tensing to lash out and break her hold on him until he felt something sharp prick his side. He froze. 

When the hell had she pulled a knife on him… and with such precision? One twitch and he’d be short a kidney. 

“I’m at my limit for the amount of sick shit I’ve had to deal with today. Are you _following_ me? Tell me!” Her forearm bore down on his windpipe so he gagged, and the sharp pressure of the knife started to sting, to the point of drawing blood.

Good christ, she was going to shank him. Time for de-escalation 101. 

He choked a bit, and gasped for breath. “Can’t— _gak_ … Cho—oking… me...” She gave him one last shake and eased her arm from his throat, stepping back to held a mean, serrated little knife out in front of her, flicking it in warning. 

“Look lady,” he said, rubbing his neck. He coughed and gave his black vest a twitch to straighten, ignoring the sting in his side. “I ain’t from the Institute, I’m from Bunker Hill! I ain’t following you. I _ain’t_ from the Institute.”

Deacon’s eyes flicked up at the sound of MacCready’s voice. “Boss? Jeanne? Hey!” The merc held his rifle, wavering between aiming it and standing down. “Is that the ‘stay rad’ guy—”

“Hold, RJ,” she said, and Deacon looked back at her, his mouth hanging open liked the sunned yokel he was supposed to be. Dead fish was best fish in this disaster, even if it did stink. 

“If you’re from Bunker Hill, what are you doing _here_? Why are you hanging around every time I turn around. ‘Stay _rad?’_ That was _you_. And then out front again, watching me. And here…”

“Yeah, so? I’m _stayin’_ here, ain’t I? Goodneighbor ain’t that big.” 

God, he needed to _end_ this conversation. Now. Yesterday.

“ _Osti criss de tabarnak_!” She cursed. “I’ve seen you in Diamond City! You’re that cop! Dogmeat knows—”

“Hey!” A new voice cracked across the lobby, and the crowd scattered. “We don’t hold with violence in this building. Not unless it’s me or Marowski starting shit. Feel me?”

The vaultie’s chin thrust forward as she turned her ire on what’s his name—Stan, that was it—that asshole Marowski’s bodyguard. He cradled a machine gun at his hip, pointed in their general direction and threatening collateral damage.

“You know this guy?” She pointed at Deacon, who was trying to creep towards the door without anyone noticing, but Dogmeat took up the position of guard and sat in his way. Every time Deacon tried to inch forward, the dog raised his lips in a mild growl—not _too_ scary compared to what he knew the dog was capable of, but enough that he didn’t dare risk it.

_Shit, shit, shit._

“I know him,” said another voice. “Lex, right?” Deacon nodded numbly at the sound of one of his cover names. Praise be to Rufus Rubbins. “He’s just a trader. Brings goods from Bunker Hill sometimes. Harmless.”

The vaultie— _Jeanne_ —curled her lip when she looked at him again. 

“Lex, huh? Get the fuck out of here,” she spat, jerking her head towards the door. “If I see your face again…” 

He didn’t wait for the rest of her threat, making a break for the door. Dogmeat barked, but the vaultie whistled as Deacon managed to wrest the door open without getting his ass bitten. Somewhere behind him her heard her snap a command in… French, but the rest of it got cut off by the slam of the Rexford’s front door. 

Deacon took a shuddering breath. Too close. Way, _way_ too fucking close. He wasn’t even gathering intel at this point, he was actually stalking the woman… 

Overall, some spectacularly sloppy work. 

_What’s the matter with you, old-timer? Seriously losing your edge, here._

He cut down and alley and squeezed himself into the little shuttered door that lead to Goodneighbor’s singular bolt-hole, the one maybe seven people total knew about. It led into the Fens by way of the old, dried up sewers, and would pop him out near the the Commons. 

Deeper into the tunnel Deacon collapsed against a jagged wall. His heart rate started to drop back towards normal, at least. She almost _stabbed_ him. She had a bead on him now, knew his face enough that he’d need a face swap for sure if he had to remain under cover. 

Or he could just blow the whole thing. Christ, he wanted to figure her out. Because… well, how often did you find a pre-war popsicle with a hell of a reason to hate the Institute? Watching her tear a path across the Commonwealth was _way_ more interesting than digging around in trash cans for coded messages that amounted to absolutely nothing. It’s not like he could help verify Randolph, or stop things like the Switchboard from happening. 

But the vaultie? Something else entirely. Something new.

And if the determined, relentless impression he'd formed of her was an accurate one, she’d waste no time in heading to Boston Common. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Whooo, that was some rapid fire updating. The next chapter is going to take a bit longer because I have a cold and also started working 40 hours a week for the first time in forever. 
> 
> Also, I reworked some of chapter 5 to alleviate concerns about Deacon’s interactions with Nat. Thanks to Kallika for pointing out the problems there, and offering some suggestions. I really appreciate it.
> 
> If anyone has concerns about content _please_ let me know here or on tumblr. I try not to write problematic stuff, or at least if it's problematic I'm aware of it and choosing to write it that way. If you need specific content warnings at the top of chapters please let me know. I try to tag but I do miss things. Happy to tag and give specific warnings. I always tag for the usual triggery stuff, but for this fic mostly just gonna be gore and mindfuckery.


	8. Red Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my GOD finally they meet. And yet, they are still kind of the worst.
> 
> But you know who’s the best? The whole mess of people who have helped me with this story. From brainstorming, to beta reading, to screaming with me about Deacon conspiracy theories at 3am, to making friggin’ FANART of Jeanne and others...I want to thank and rec following Ao3 creators. Go forth and read their works and be in awe of them as I am.
> 
> MizDirected \- hoxadrine \- eurodox59 \- MitzyBlue \- PostApocalypticPrincess

**Jeanne**

Jeanne made her way up the stairs, white-knuckled and shaking. Her nails dug hard into the wooden crate full of precious anti-rads that had been almost too easy to find, and almost to hard to earn. 

_Pickman._ She shuddered, utter revulsion rolling through her body. It wasn’t the gory reality of dead bodies that got to her. No. Jeanne was a medical professional at her core. She knew there were near-infinite ways a body could be dis-assembled, by violence or technical precision, or both. It was the re-assembly that really got to her, the intentionality of blood crusted canvases, the hanging viscera, and the artfully piled skulls, still fresh but picked carrion-clean. 

And then, just hours after she strapped a dead raiders shiv to her forearm, she’d nearly taken a man apart herself. 

The new knife had been too easy to pull. She wore it like she used to in the old days, out in the field and then after when she lived and worked in the Toronto squats. Hurting, healing, building, breaking, gutting stalkers—you never knew when a blade would come in handy. 

MacCready’s shadow kept catching the corner of her eye as she dragged herself up the stairs, making her glance back like Pickman or the maybe-not-a-stalker might be tailing her instead of her hired gun.

“You’re twitching, boss,” RJ said as she reached the landing.

“Can you blame me?” She said, fumbling with the key a moment before bumping the door to their shared hotel room open with her hip.

“D’you really think that guy was stalking you?” MacCready asked as he sauntered past her and sank down onto the sagging, no-color couch in a puff of dust.

“No idea,” Jeanne said, kicking the door closed behind her. “If he was, I’m sure I’ll see him again. If not, well...a healthy dose of paranoia is rarely ever amiss.”

“Sure. Scared the sh—agh, the crap outta him, though. It was pretty funny, the look on his face.”

“I didn’t notice,” she said, the inconsequential lie dropping without a second thought. He did look scared of her, gaping down at her like he was utterly shocked to find a tiny woman threatening to skewer his kidney with a shiv if he so much as twitched. 

Jeanne put the crate of anti-rads on the floor before shrugging off her backpack and shucking her armor. She leaned her rifle against the wall and turned to the bed, intent to flop face down and possibly fall asleep right then and there, but something stopped her. 

“Is that yours?” She asked RJ, pointing to the book that lay in the middle of the dirty, bare mattress. 

MacCready glanced up from the comic he’d pulled from his pocket, and looked at the bed. “Nope,” he said, and went back to reading. 

Jeanne approached the bed, frowning at the mysterious volume. It was a faded blue hardcover and showed signs of water damage, black spots of mold blooming along its edges. Despite the book’s sorry state, the letters on the front cover were still legible. 

_Catch-22._

She checked all around the book without touching it, wondering if it was a trap. In the past two weeks she’d seen people make bombs out of everything from baseballs to bottlecaps, so a book that threw acid or otherwise exploded would not entirely shock her. 

But it was just a book. No trigger mechanism, no wires, no tripps. As far as she could tell, nothing lurked underneath. Satisfied, Jeanne reached out and touched it, two questions warring with each other.

Who the hell put it here? 

And… would the text still be legible? Enough to read?

A book. The thing seemed precious, an invitation to revisit the old world. She wanted to read it _._ She hadn’t read _Catch-22_ since CEGEP _._ [1]

Another book lay in the bottom of her bag, one she’d promised Daisy she would return to the public library. It was a classic romance. What was it? _The Time Traveler's Wife._ Not a terrible story, but Jeanne always prefered non-fiction. Biographies. Travel. History. 

But _Catch-22?_ A true masterpiece of “war never changes” irony. Once Jeanne thought war was romantic, terribly patriotic. Fighting for truth and freedom, in true Quebecois fashion. In true _French_ fashion, French of any flavor. 

She picked up the book. Something inside rattled.

Frowning, Jeanne peeled open the cover to find faded, half ruined pages. Illegible text blurred together, lost to 200 years of exposure to the elements. Her mouth twisted in disappointment as she leafed through the first few pages until she found a hole carved into the rest of the book, the pages glued together to create some kind of container. A false book.

Inside the hollowed out pages was a holotape.

 _“C'est quoi cet osti la…”_ she hissed and plucked the holotape from the book to peer at it, nothing the lack of a label, nothing to mark it’s previous owner, nor what information it might contain.

RJ stared at her from over the top of his comic. “The he—heck is that, boss?”

“Someone left me a message, I think,” she said. A tingle started in her fingers, a peculiar numbness that shot through her nerves and quickened her heart. She popped the tape into her Pip-Boy, thankful for the computer’s existence for the hundredth time since getting off ice, and hit play. 

A woman’s voice delivered a Synth Rights manifesto, the recording reedy thin in the stale hotel room air. The messenger finished with a rallying cry that named their common enemy, and the tingle in Jeanne’s extremities raced down her spine 

_“So join with us in fighting the real enemy: The Institute. When you're ready for that next step, don't worry, we'll find you.”_

“Oh, that’s great. Very helpful,” MacCreedy said from his seat on the ragged couch.

“Well, it’s a start—” Her finger hovered over the eject button, letting the holotape play on in clicking silence for a moment. Then there was a warble, and another voice chimed in. 

She grinned. “Knew it,” she said under her breath.

 _“See? Told you that you didn’t have to worry.”_ The gentle baritone voice managed to sound both smug and soothing.The accent sounded vaguely west-coast, which struck Jeanne’s ears oddly after all the wide Boston accents. Her smile faded as she matched the voice to the face.

 _‘Stay rad.’_

Lex. Stalker. Cop. Jeanne’s lip raised in the shadow of a sneer. The voice definitely belonged the man she’d accosted downstairs. 

_“This is… uh… us. Finding you. Follow the Freedom Trail.”_

That made Lex—if that really was his name—a Railroad operative. And a confirmed stalker. At least she knew _why_ he was stalking her now _._ The gratification on that little realization was so instant it was almost dizzying. And slightly relieving. If he wasn’t from the Institute, but from the Railroad, stalking might almost be excusable, just due to sheer relief.

The tape clicked off and Jeanne popped it from her Pip-Boy, tossing it on the bed next to the fake book.. 

Railroad… freeing synths… fighting the Institute. The Railroad was clearly some sort of high security operation. Stalker must some kind of… what? A recruiter? Why didn’t he just _talk_ to her, like a normal human? Then again, if Jeanne knew anything about clandestine organizations, she knew they tended to be a bunch of damn weirdos. She’d worked with enough intel runners and wildcard Anti-Anx organizers in her day that suddenly the stalking didn’t seem so out of the ordinary, or quite so dangerous. This was as close as she’d get to an open invitation.

And the way to find them was to follow the Freedom Trail—

_Only one week in Boston, first time she was brave enough to leave the house. Only a few weeks and she still wasn’t used to being called Sophie. Nate took her to Boston Common and they fed the swans, walked a red line, followed bronze disks from historic site to historic site, Nate’s arm around her shoulder; his hand kept straying to the top of her belly. She was showing, and her feet hurt from the extra weight of the baby. Nate smiled—_

Jeanne sniffed and blinked away the memory. If the Freedom Trail was the same one she’d walked with Nate all those years ago, she knew where it started. 

Nate seemed to smile at her from her memory. He always did believe in her.

_Not now, Nate._

The map of Boston flickered to life on her Pip-Boy screen and she studied the area around Goodneighbor, tapping her finger on the chassis as she looked for the the swan pond that would be the most obvious landmark. 

“You’re never gonna find them,” MacCreedy drawled from his spot on the couch, not looking up from his comic. 

“You think that _tas de merde_ left the tape by an accident? Hm?” 

“Merde-dee-what now?”

“‘Tas de merde’ means ‘peice of shit,’ essentially.” 

“Oh, shi-shoot.” MacCready blushed, and Jeanne smirked at his accidental swearing. 

“I say let them come to you,” he said. “Then you’re the one who can make the next move, and gain the upper hand.” 

Jeanne rubbed at the muscle she’d tweaked in her neck when she’d assaulted the man who had been following her.

 _Since Diamond City._

She should have stabbed him.

“Wait for _him_? Not a chance. I’m sick of games.” She cracked a crooked grin, remembering the stupid joke Stalker cracked that had made him stand out enough to pick him from a crowd again. It was almost like he _wanted_ her to notice him. 

MacCreedy looked up from his comic with a raised brow. “I don’t like that smile,” he said. “Does this mean we’re going out again?”

“No. I’m getting some sleep, and then I’m taking a day off. And _then_ I’m going out. You can stay. These people are obviously flighty. Some ex-Gunnersniffing around will make them worse.” 

MacCreedy huffed, and leafed to the next page of his comic, feet kicked up on the crate that served as some semblance of a coffee table. 

_Crisse,_ what she wouldn’t do for some coffee. Double cream, double sugar. 

“Doesn't matter to me, then. I’ve already been paid. Just… good luck. You’re tangling with the Institute’s number one enemies, here.” 

Jeanne chuckled, her heart doing a funny little leap. Laughter. Excitement. A touch of adrenaline. And maybe a lead that wouldn’t involve taking a trip to ground zero of atomic annihilation. 

~~~

The Third Rail was quickly becoming Jeanne’s favorite place in the entire Commonwealth. The bartender was sassy, the drinks were pretty damn good, and there was _music._ Not the old, cheesy songs that played day and night off of Diamond City radio, but real, live music. 

Jeanne found a lonely spot on a couch near the glittering songbird in red and nursed her rum and Nuka, wishing she had a cherry to go with it. 

Magnolia crooned into the mic, and Jeanne acknowledge the protests of at least three major muscle knots and the sharp pang of her pulled neck muscle as she let her shoulders relax. She she stretched her back with a twist of her hips and shoulders, rewarded with the satisfying pop of a few stiff joints. Jeanne’s eyes followed the sparkle of Magnolia’s red dress, soothing her into a hypnotic, thousand-yard stare. Her mouth found the lip of the glass as she tipped her drink forward, tasting the sweet burn of her cocktail, her mind a million miles away from stalkers and serial killers and secret organizations. For just a moment she let herself revel in being utterly alone, chasing a thread of contentment for the first time in what felt like a hundred years. _Only two weeks, and she was already..._

“This seat taken, doll?” A rough voice hasped above her, and she jumped, the thread of relaxation utterly severed. 

She cracked an eye, squinting up at Mayor Hancock and his ridiculous hat and red frock coat. 

“Guess not,” she replied after a moment, hauling herself upright and away from the easy daze of Magnolia’s singing.

“Thanks,” he said and sat. He opened a tin and held it out to her. “Mentat?” he asked.

Jeanne shook her head. “I don’t partake.” They made that shit out of _fertilizer._

“Suit yourself,” he said, popping two chalky pellets into his mouth and sucking with evident relish. They stared at each other for a moment, Jeanne feeling reticent in the face of the foppish, enigmatic ghoul who was apparently savvy enough to run an entire city. 

“Heard you had a dust-up in the Rexford yesterday,” he said, leaning back against the arm of the couch.

“I thought someone was stalking me,” she said. “A man named Lex. Do you know him?”

Hancock hummed, fixing those bottomless black eyes on her even as he patted down his pockets, blindly looking for something. “He ain’t a fixture, but he’s been around here ‘n there.”

“Says he’s from Bunker Hill. Can you vouch for him?” 

“I don’t vouch for anyone not in my inner circle, Jeanne. Can I call ya Jeanne?”

She nodded. “Better than ‘doll,’” she said, eliciting a chuckle from Hancock, a low, rough sound that dragged the corner of her mouth up in spite of herself.

“You got it,” he said, at last finding his box of cigarettes. He offered her a smoke and Jeanne shook her head. 

“Suppose there isn’t much point is saying those things will kill you. Everything out here will kill you.” 

“Truer words, Jeanne,” he said around the butt of his smoke, the flare of a match throwing his craggy face into sharp relief as he lit his cigarette. Jeanne didn't find the face uneasy though, not like the rotting, maddened ghouls she met out in the wild. There was something about Hancock that put her at ease more than anyone else she'd met since waking up. “I gotta hand it to you. We don’t get many vault dwellers out this way. Most don’t make it more’n a few miles past home before they give up or die.”

“I don’t really have a choice in the matter. Not dying is high on my priority list, and the vault wasn’t ever a home to me.” She managed to keep most of the bitterness out of her understatement, but Hancock still cocked a hairless eyebrow. 

She barreled on. “About the Rexford. I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I was feeling a little paranoid after Pickman, I’m sure you understand.” 

Hancock nodded. “Sure, sister. Just watch your tail around Morowski.”

“What about Lex? Is he the stalking sort?” Hancock’s lack of a vouch for Lex meant the Mayor didn’t know him, which Jeanne doubted, or he was hiding something. Protecting him, perhaps. Or _not_ protecting her.

“Can’t really say. He keeps himself to himself.”

“Any ties to the Railroad?” She couldn’t help but ask it, revealing as the question might be. Hancock’s answer would also be illuminating. 

Hancock exhaled a blue plume of smoke. It hung around him in the low light, making him look devilish as he studied her with bottomless black eyes, just touched with something oily-green that caught and reflected the light like a cat’s eyes. Magnolia’s song ended, and Jeanne glanced over to see the singer step off the stage to a smattering of applause. Jeanne took a sip of her rum and Nuka and tried to look bored.

“Sorry, doll—” fumbled for a moment with the pet name. “Ah. ‘scuse me—Jeanne...” 

She waved off his fumble. He didn’t say her name right, anyway. _Jeen_ , with a long, ugly _e._ Like blue jeans. She was used to no one saying her name right anywhere but back home that it almost didn’t matter—

“T’be honest, I don’t know anything about the Railroad,” Hancock said, waving the lingering blue smoke away with a lazy hand. “Goodneighbor keeps its own council. Don’t need dabbling with the likes of the Railroad t’ paint a target on us for the Institute.”

“Fair enough,” Jeanne said, taking another sip of her drink. “So, do you have any advice on exploring Boston Common?”

Hancock choked a little on the smoke from his next drag. “Damn, Sister. You don’t fuck around.”

She shook her head, letting her lips curl into a small, secret smile. “Never,” she said. 

“Well,” Hancock said with a grin of his own, “best advice I got is don’t feed the Swan.”

~~~

_“This is where America was born.”_

_Arm around her shoulders, warm and comforting as the world seemed to tower over her. Nate towered too, but in a good way, tall and lanky. Most people towered over her, anyway._

_America. This country, so full of contradictions, the smiling faces hiding the worry of soaring gas prices and the human rights crisis burning just 600 miles to the north, secret decision of global importance made locked behind closed government doors. The poor, the corrupt, the ones who would be safe when the bombs fell. If they fell. The threat of it was enough to rip the world apart._

_The baby kicked, and Sophie put her hand on her belly. Nate’s hand covered hers a moment later and he drew her on to the next landmark._

_“This is where—”_

Dogmeat whined and licked her fingers, and Jeanne shook herself. _Not now._ She wished Nate would stop invading her consciousness like he was camping out in the present where he didn’t belong, barging in when she needed him least. 

_Pay attention._ She scratched Dogmeat behind the ears and looked down at her feet.

The disk sprouted a red line that she knew would lead her on a 4 kilometer hike around the heart of old Boston, stopping to all the major historic revolutionary sites and culminating at Bunker Hill. She was almost tempted to head straight to the monument and find the Railroad at its source when something white caught her eye.

A bit of paint. The characters _2A._

She frowned and followed the line, Dogmeat trotting along behind her. The characters _6L_ defaced the disk in front of the Old State House. It was a _code._ She made notes on her Pip-Boy as she followed the line into the ruins of the city, away from the Commons and Swan’s Pond, her steps slowing as the the ancient, claustrophobic streets closed in on her. 

Old Boston was prime feral territory, and not moments after the realization the ghouls started popping up like daisies—vicious, murderous daisies that wanted to rip her to shreds. The ferals’ snarls were soon joined by the bellow of Super Mutants and Jeanne abandoned the trail to took cover in a nearby building. As if that wasn’t enough, the Raiders announced themselves with the sound of firing pipe-rifles and yelled obscenities, interspersed with rocking explosion of grenades and molotovs that rocked the entire street. At that first explosion, Jeanne’s back hit the wall below a broken storefront window and she held still, hardly dearing to breath as she waited for the two factions to kill each other off, along with whatever ferals got caught in the crossfire. Eventually the peppering of gunfire died down and Jeanne peered through a window to see a street full of corpses. 

Movement across the street caught her eye. She scanned the buildings through the new scope on her hunting rifle and trained the glowing bead on a surviving raider. Her rifle cracked and kicked back into her shoulder; the raider fell three stories to streed below. Another raider framed herself perfectly in a broken doorway, a story below. She leaned out, looking for Jeanne’s position and yelling something, maybe her fallen comrade’s name, maybe a curse. Jeanne fired again, and the raider draped over the doorway with a boneless sort of grace. 

A thrill of satisfaction made Jeanne shudder. She’d always been a decent shot, hunting with dad back when she was just a kid, and then again when she cleaned for the Bloc, but it had been a handful of years (212, but who was counting?) since she’d practiced her marksmanship. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever been this good. Maybe it was the pressure, an intense need to survive beyond anything she’d ever felt before, was the thing that guided her aim now.

Once the street was clear Jeanne continued her walk, recording each letter and corresponding number on her Pip-Boy until she had eight pieces of the code. At the last disk she looked up to find herself standing on the front steps of a decrepit looking church and not at Bunker Hill, where she supposed she might end up. The red line continued to the door and stopped. She followed, shoving her shoulder hard into the heavy wood of the door, almost impossible to shove open.

What had Nate said about this church? 

She mouthed the words: “One if by land, two if by…. _shit!_ ” She slipped in through the half open door and jumped back into the wall as a feral burst from the detritus of old pews and fallen rafters. Those things scared the _shit_ out of her. Dogmeat burst past, snarling, and pulled on its leg so the creature collapsed in a heap of limbs and rags. Jeanne shot it in the head, the report of her rifle and the ghoul’s dying snarls echoing from the rafters.

The echoes died into a hush. Her breath was loud and ragged in her ears, accompanied by a faint dripping sound and the settling creak common to all ancient wooden buildings. Jeanne looked up, wide eyed at the absolute ruin of pews, a pulpit, and the fallen gallery. 

Even in ruin, the church was painfully humble compared to the imposing and solemn Catholic churches Jeanne had grown up in.There was something very American about the simplicity of the Old North Church, where seeds of revolution bloomed into American myth. The architecture was austere and self confident, utterly boring to her eyes. Yet there was also a sense of peace that came with abandoned places, a residual sense of altered reality that Jeanne always found oddly sacred. The drip-drip of condensation continued and her breathing steadied, and Jeanne ventured into the silence. 

More ferals lurked around the moldering, half destroyed building, and Jeanne killed them one by one, mechanical as she took aim and held her ground as Dogmeat distracted the ghouls. Each shot rang hollow against the broken rafters, swallowed in darkness. If there were people nearby they must be hidden safely away, because the ghouls had not stirred until she opened the door. Perhaps they were a security measure.

Her top-to-bottom search of the building eventually lead her to the crypt, a maze of hallways and dead ends. She stepped over skeletons and executed yet more ghouls. The air grew cooler, danker, and then her geiger counter clicked in warning as she skirted a barrel of radioactive waste. Another excellent and low maintenance security measure. 

Past the barrels of rads, she found a red wire, and followed it along the wall. 

“Hmmm,” she hummed when she found a bronze disc. She ran her fingers over the words: _The Freedom Trail - Boston Common - Year 1776,_ and then gave the center nob an experimental twist. The thing spun like a decoder ring from box of Sugarbombs. Jeanne studied the bronze disk and how a wire vanished into the brick wall, feeling like she had stepped into a pulpy spy novel.

Rads, Ghouls, and secret codes. Not that hard to get around if one was determined, but enough security to keep wanderers and explorers away. The biggest strength of the hideout was that it was random enough that no one but someone actually _looking_ for it would find the place.

 _Security by obscurity was one way to hide,_ Jeanne thought. _Not the best way, but you take what you can get at the end of the world._

She unscrambled the password, sorting each letter into numerical order. The code was a basic transposition cipher, and the password ended up being… Jeanne scrunched her nose in silent, disbelieving laughter as she followed the order of the numbers.

_Fancylads_

A moment later, a false wall slid open with a rumble and a spray of dust and tiny flakes of mortar. Jeanne waved her hand in front of her face to clear the air, and crept forward into the black silence beyond. She trailed one hand across the rough brick to keep herself oriented, slipping her 10mm from its holster with the other hand, finger on the trigger. Dogmeat crept behind her, hard on her heels.

The air shifted as she moved forward, and Jeanne sensed open space. She slowed, feet seeking for uneven ground or a ledge, when a blinding light shattered the darkness. She froze, squinting away from the harsh spotlight and she straightened slowly, raising her hands as a voice commanded her to stop.

Floaters and light-trails danced in her vision as it started to clear, and she found herself on the lip of a cavern, three people standing on a ledge on the other side of the room. Two of them hand guns pointed at her head.

A silver-haired woman with russet-brown skin held a minigun like it was a toy, and Jeanne had to pull her eyes away from the sight to take stock of the other two. The blonde, pale woman, the one who commanded Jeanne to stop, looked unarmed but smoked a cigarette so fiercely it seemed like a weapon unto itself. The other gun-toter, a young, sallow man with dark circles under his eyes, held a pistol like he wasn’t sure he was pointing it in the right direction, his stance low and wavering.

Minigun seemed like the one to watch, but big guns like that would be an easy threat to manage in a controlled space like the crypt. Miniguns took a while to heat up and start firing, and risked a lot of collateral damage. Pistols were faster, and one held by a nervous rookie could take Jeanne out with an impulsive twitch of his finger on the trigger.

“Dogmeat, _au pied_.” The dog sat at her heels, gazing at the trio on the other side of the room. Jeanne kept Rookie in the corner of her eye as she watched the blonde woman smoke. 

“Who the hell are you?” Blondie demanded, throwing her voice so it echoed against the brick.

The corner of Jeanne’s mouth twitched. “Good question. I think I’m a friend.”

“You’ve gone through a lot of trouble for you to simply _think_ you’re a friend.” 

Jeanne shrugged. “Enemy of my enemy, et cetera. I think we share one. The Institute?” 

The smoking woman sharpened at the word, and Jeanne carefully flexed her fingers around the butt of her gun, now she had the blonde woman's attention. 

“Can we put the guns away?” she asked, her voice so polite that it sounded condescending to her own ears. 

The woman considered her for a moment and then gave a jerk of a nod. Jeanne lowered her arms slowly, keeping her eyes on Rookie. 

“Now tell Rookie and Minigun to put up theirs up, and we can talk. As friends.”

The blonde woman sighed and waved her hand, trailing blue smoke. Rookie eased off first, keeping his pistol low, still held with two hands. Minigun simply shifted so Jeanne no longer stared down the barrel of a gun that belonged on the runningboard of a Vertibird. 

“That’s a bit better,” Jeanne said, slipping her pistol into the holster on her thigh and shifting her weight, one hip cocked. “So. Tell me about the Railroad.”

“If you’re here, I’m assuming you’ve heard of us, and what we do. In a world of hostility, suspicion, and hunters, we’re the synths’ only friends. I am Desdemona. The leader of the Railroad.” The speech was practiced, like the one on the holotape, and Jeanne recognized Desdemona's voice.

She felt a little bubble of excitement rise in her chest. Synths meant Institute. Institute meant Shaun. And if these people were organized resistance to the Institute, people who understood, whose expertise she could use, the maybe… maybe she wouldn’t have to be all alone in this fight. So far she’d cobbled together enough support to survive from people like Nick, and Piper, who helped from the goodness of their hearts, and from Hancock and RJ, who worked their own angle in the form of caps and favors. If Jeanne could leverage the Railroad, if these people were legitimate...

“How did you know to follow the Freedom Trial?” Desdemona asked, her head tilting to the side.

Dogmeat leaned into Jeanne’s legs as she considered her reply. Piper had mentioned the Railroad first, when Jeanne got a crash course in synths and the Institute. Piper painted them as a clandestine, highly secretive synth sympathizers and didn’t think they amounted to much beyond helping synths. Jeanne felt no need to drag Piper into this mess, nor put the reporter on the trail of an organization who valued their secrecy, either. Win-win for both sides. Besides, Piper hadn’t mentioned _how_ to find them. Just that they existed.

“I found a holotape in Goodneighbor. It told me to follow the Freedom Trail. I got the cipher, decoded your adorable password and here I am.” 

“I can’t believe you followed the Freedom Trail by yourself?” Minigun huffed a bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t even do it.”

Jeanne smirked. “That’s because that big-ass gun of yours slows you down.” 

Minigun’s mouth twisted, and Jeanne felt the edge of a brag well up, how she let two factions fight each other while she waited out the fight, but a flicker of movement behind the trio of Railroad members drew Jeanne’s eye. 

Someone with dark hair and dark glasses strolled up the long hallway towards them, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. No one so much as batted an eye at him as he came to a stop beside Desdemona. The Railroad agents’ postures remained the same, even relaxed a little. Interesting. Spoke of trust. Jeanne glanced at the newcomer again, light bouncing off his sunglasses...

Of course. Of fucking _course._

It was him, and those fucking _sunglasses,_ looking smug and innocuous. 

Jeanne opened her mouth to say something… preferably something vitriolic and cutting, something witty and dismissive and… completely— She shut her mouth and decided she would pretend she had no idea who Stalker was. Never seen him before in her life.

 _Asshole_. Creepy... fucking…. _tas de marde_.

“Deacon,” Desdemona said, glancing at Stalker. So he had a name. She’d stick with Stalker. “You’re late.”

“Can’t help it when you forgot to invite me to your little parties,” he said, his voice still that oddly west-coast drawl. 

“I need intel,” Desdemona snapped. “Who is this?”

“Wow. Newsflash for you, boss.” Stalker clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “This lady is _kind of_ a big deal out there.”

“Huh,” Jeanne said, crossing her arms and glaring him like she might be able to set him on fire from across the room with just her eyes. “Looks like I have a stalker.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, shaking his head, even though it was exactly like that. “You’ve got a reputation. Rebuilding the Minutemen—” Desdemona’s head snapped towards Deacon and something unspoken passed between them as he continued, “—helping settlements and leaving trails of dead raiders and live, adoring fans in your wake. And as if that wasn’t enough, I’m pretty sure anyone who kills Kellogg is going to be good in the Railroad’s books.” He dropped the words like he was a fox slipping into a coop full of unsuspecting chickens.

“What? Seriously?” Desdemona said, and Deacon smiled, his words evidently having the desired effect. Desdemona looked at Jeanne with new eyes, scanning her for signs of _something._

 _Yes, I know._ Jeanne thought, tucking a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. _Kind of short, kind of fat. Stupid mom hair. Not really the image a bloodthirsty killer._ Maybe the scars would help back up her apparently growing reputation.

“ _She_ killed Kellogg?”

Minigun snorted, tossing her hair. “Come on, Deacon. You _know_ Kellogg’s got this uncanny ability to stay _not stay dead_. I bet we hear rumors of him being the Institute’s pet rabid dog again in a week’s time.” 

Jeanne swallowed hard as Minigun’s words reminder her of something Kellogg had said just before he died. 

_A better death. This one I got to see coming._

She cleared her throat, shaking off the voice. “He’s dead,” she said. “I took him apart.” _Literally._ “Were you aware he was a synth?”

Desdemona froze, cigarette halfway to her mouth. “No. What proof do you have?” 

“There’s a doctor named Amari in Goodneighbor who has a bit of his brain that I gave her. She’s keeping it to study.” Naming Amari could potentially put the doctor at risk, but if Jeanne was getting an accurate read on the Railroad, information was their lifeblood and she needed to buy their trust as quickly as possible. The way Desdemona demanded intel from Stalker—no, Jeanne relented—Deacon proved as much. 

Jeanne doubled down, name dropping the only living synth she knew. “If you need further proof, have one of your agents ask Nick Valentine.” 

Desdemona’s mouth twitched at the mention of Valentine, and Jeanne allowed herself a satisfied smile, hoping it was enough, because she was running out of names. 

Desdemona huffed. “You’re not the first person who’s joined because of a grudge against the Institute, but you’re the first to finish the Freedom Trail. I suppose—” 

“Come _on,_ Des. We’d be crazy not to pick her up.”

Desdemona’s head snapped back towards Deacon. “Are you vouching for her, Deacon?” 

Deacon smiled, his grin crooked even as he squared his shoulders. “Yes,” he said, his voice emphatic. “Definitely.” 

Desdemona huffed again, her features softening . “Fine. That changes things. I don’t know what you’ve heard out there. You obviously know what a synth is. So why find us?”

“I’m looking for the Institute, and not in the fun, ‘ _Hi, it’s nice to meet you_ ’ way. I assumed an organization dedicated to freeing synths might be interested in partnering with me. Pooling resources, sharing information.” 

Desdemona nodded. “So, you seek an alliance. You’re obviously capable if you killed Kellogg. We could use you, but its is dangerous. People die. So I have one question for you: would you put your life in danger to save someone? Even if that person was a synth?”

Jeanne licked her lips. Kellogg was a real person, who bled and died. She’d walked through his dreams and regrets, felt his emotions so strongly that they eclipsed her own. 

Kellogg died just like anyone, synth, ghoul, Super Mutant, or human. If he was a person, and Nick Valentine was a person, by that logic, all Synths were people, and she couldn’t help a human while excluding others just because they were born in a lab or had some wires in their brain.

What had Mayor Hancock said when he’d handed over her box of anti-rads? She’d liked the words. _Someone needs helping, we help 'em; someone needs hurting, we hurt 'em._

She saw Deacon shift, his head tilting to the side as he watched her think. 

At last, Jeanne spoke. “I don’t care if a person is made of circuits, or meat, or both. If someone needs help, I’ll do what I can.” 

Desdemona hummed. “Pragmatic and honorable. That will do, for now. Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to train a new agent, but there are things you can do to help us, and we can further our common goal. See Deacon for details.”

See Deacon. Of _course_. She would have prefered Minigun herself over the stalker—Rookie didn’t seem like the leader type, and Minigun was the muscle, so _of course_ it would have to be him. Stalker. 

Deacon. _Whatever_. 

He met her in the middle of the room, watching as she picked her way down the broken stairs. Dogmeat followed along behind her as she approached, but didn’t stop when she did. Instead he planted himself in front of Deacon and gazed up at him, tail wagging.

Damn dog couldn’t get enough of this one. She groaned. It would be easier if Dogmeat bit him.

“You’re not going to try and shank me again, are ya pal?” Deacon said, ignoring the dog. He didn’t openly carry a weapon, and fidgeted as if he wanted something to keep his hands busy.

Jeanne planted her fists on her hips. “It’s tempting _buddy,_ but considering there’s a minigun in the room... we’ll see how this conversation goes first.” 

The Railroad agent chuckled. “Yeah... sorry about the reception,” he said. “When you tango with the Institute, you gotta be careful when someone new gets on the dance floor.” 

“Not the tune I would have picked, but I understand,” she said. The CAA Bloc had used far less obtuse recruitment methods, but suspicion was a vital tool when powerful people were watching, as she assumed the Institute was. 

Deacon nodded. “Kind of killed our chances at a friendly first impression, though.”

“And and whole stalking thing was supposed to make me feel comfortable and relaxed?” 

“Ah, yeah. That. Part of the job. I’m intel, and you… Well, like I said, we’ve got to be careful who we invite to the dance.”

“But then you vouched for me. Why?”

“Let’s just say I’ve got a good feeling about you.”

“Sorry,” Jeanne said, shaking her head. “You owe me a bit more than that. You say you have to be careful, then vouch for a total stranger. What am I missing.”

Deacon hesitated for a second, pulling a face that might have been reluctance. It was hard to tell with the sunglasses hiding his eyes. “Persistent, aren’t you,” he said. “Look, I don’t know if we can trust you, but I hope we can. We just survived a hell of crisis. Barely. So we might just be a teeny, weeny bit desperate for new members.” 

_Teeny, weeny?_ Oh for the love of—

But he wasn’t finished: “If everything was sunshine and bottlecaps, we’d probably play a longer ‘getting to know you game,’ but we don’t have that luxury.”

“So, you followed me around to see if I’d be a good fit.”

“Pretty much.”

““I’ve been rubbing elbows with you for a week now. Why not just ask?”

“I might have, if you took any longer to get here.”

Two weeks. She’d been awake for _two weeks._ Yep. Definitely should have stabbed him. 

He barreled on. “So. Des wants to make you a tourist. What a waste, I say. I’ve got a job. Too big for me, just perfect for the two of us. If we pull it off, it’ll impress Des enough to convince Des you’re not just some hack.”

“Us?”

“Sure. I understand your hesitancy. Hell, I wouldn't want to work with me either, but compartmentalization is the name of the game with the Railroad. I’m the only one who knows the details.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. Of course he was the only one. “Let’s hear it, then.”

Deacon gave Dogmeat a fond scratch behind the ears. “Perfecto. Let’s meet up at the old freeway outside Lexington two days from now. I’ll fill you in once you get there. All I’ll say now is it’s going to be a wild and dangerous ride, but I’m sure that’s nothing new for someone like you.”

“You would know,” she said. He’d followed her around enough to figure out that she was no slouch, at least. Wild and dangerous might be pushing into absurd flattery, though.

He flashed her a brilliant smile, revealing crooked teeth behind the crooked grin. “I’d know what? That it’s gonna be a wild and dangerous ride? I’d know ‘cause that’s how I like it.” 

Jeanne wasn’t the praying type, but since she was deep in the heart of a church crypt she would make an exception. Her eyes sank closed and she rubbed her temples with a sigh.

“Lord grant me patience,” she said, loud enough for the whole cavern to hear. 

Behind her someone—she thought it might be Minigun—barked a laugh. 

~~~

[1] CEGEP - post-secondary, pre-university education in Quebec.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, getting to know you! And snark.


	9. Hard Switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t usually rely so heavily canon dialogue but Deacon is too perfect and I love everything he says. Also he’s funnier than I am, so...I’ll take it.

**Deacon**

He sat in the bush, waiting for her to arrive amid the dark blue chill of twilight. Dull, hazy evenings always promised fog by morning. On the overpass above him a tourist waited to be pumped for information. Below him, the old Switchboard sat full of ancient government secrets, dead Railroad agents, an army of Synths, and deep in the heart of it all, a holotape.

But all Deacon could really thinking about was what the vaultie would call herself, when she finallymade it into HQ. Deacon was tired of calling her ‘the vaultie’ like she’s an animal he didn't want to name for fear of getting attached. He had a few ideas for her codename. Cactus. Prickles. Salty. Frowner. Knifey Shivdark. Too bad Schrödinger didn’t exactly roll of the tongue.

It wasn’t going to be an easy run. An army of Synths was no joke and to top it off, Deacon had a feeling that that the vaultie didn’t like him very much. She was tricker than Kelly K. ever had been, through at least the vaultie hadn’t tried to light his wig on fire. At least not yet.

He heard a sound and peered over the lip of the rill to see a figure striding through the blue twilight towards the overpass. The figure was short and wore ill fitting armor, the bulky outline of a Pip Boy on one wrist. Yep, that was her. Deacon scrambled down into the hollow to wait as if he’d been standing there for hours, instead of hiding in a bush.

The vaultie stopped short when she caught sight of him, her head tilting to the side.

“Deacon?” she said, her voice small and uncertain.

He looked down at his current getup: one of his snazzier drifter personas complete with a broad brimmed hat and patchy tan coat, narrow cloth necktie tucked into his collar.

“Hey,” he said. “Like my disguise? It’s wastelander cameo.” He dropped his voice into a lower register, growling, “‘This is my pile of garbage, _asshole_. Back of.’”

“Uh… wow,” she said, huffing a little as she backed up half a step. "I didn’t recognize you. Which is actually impressive, considering.”

_Easy, Deacon. You’re scaring the lady._

He inclined his head, dropping the aggressive drifter persona to bounce a little on the balls of his feet _._ “You’re lucky I didn’t do one of my face swaps.”

“Face swaps?”

“Yeah, I like to mix it up every few years… new nose, new jawline, new gender. You know, the whole workup.”

“That’s… committed of you.” she said. “What pronouns do you use?”

He covered the sudden short-circuit in his brain with an automatic smile. “I don’t actually care,” he said, “but he and him is easiest. Keeps me low profile when I’m looking this handsome.”

He rubbed the stubble on his jaw, thinking about how else he’d looked over the years. Deacon had undergone more surgeries than he could comfortably count, not all of them on his face. The process of becoming Deacon was endless and ever-changing: endless wardrobe switches, tucking, packing, stuffing shirts. People wondered: Disguises, new identities? Probably. Deacon fucking with gender? Absolutely. Man? Woman?

 _Eh_.

Folks like Glory, Tom, and Dez—folks who had been running with the Railroad long enough—would remember the years when he played gender roulette with gleeful abandon. But something had shifted in the past few years. There was something comfortable about the neutral, vague masculinity that settled into his bones, a rightness that that was foreign and frankly, itchy. He wasn’t supposed to feel so _secure_ and yet...it also made questions about his pronouns pretty easy to answer.

She nodded, seeming to accept his answer. “All right. Are we doing something specific here?” She looked around, eyes lingering on the deepening blue sky, the crumbling overpass, and then back to him.

“Yep,” he said. “About the job. On the surface it’s a simple retrieval mission, but there’s going to be a lot of resistance.” He kept his voice low, and the vaultie took a few steps closer, watching him intently with dark, narrowed eyes.

It was odd talking to someone who actually _listened_. The crew back at HQ learned to tune him out as much as possible and most Wastelanders couldn’t bother listening to anything beyond the clink of caps or gurgling of ferals. He barreled on. “We had a base under a Slokom’s Joe—”

“That’s a—” she struggled for a moment, “—was a _doughnut_ shop?”

Deacon nodded. “It’s a lot better than it sounds. Or it was, until everything went to hell.”

“Is this the ‘crisis’ you mentioned before, under the church?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We thought we were secure. Equipped for anything. You’ll see what I mean when we get in there. Anyway, the Institute found us.”

 _Infiltration. Betrayal. Maven—replaced-by-a-synth Maven, as it turned out—standing at the door with that triumphant smile on her face as she dropped the security failsafes and let in a flood of Gen 1s and a handful of Coursers. It had been more than enough._ “They broke through our defenses in under a minute, shot up the entire place. The survivors didn’t have time to grab anything, so we left a lot behind.”

The vaultie’s face closed in as she frowned. “I take it this is not a rescue mission, then. What are we going in for?”

“We’ll be looking for tech—a prototype—that got left behind. No idea what it does. That’s the thing with the Railroad. Compartmentalized information is the only reason we’re still standing. I know it sucks to risk your neck for something without all the details, but that’s the way we roll.” He expected her to demand an answer, but she just nodded, so he rushed on. “We’re going to meet a Tourist who’s been watching the old Switchboard. We’ll pump them for intel, see what they know. I’ll take point for now.”

Deacon clambered onto the roof of a half vertical bus and carefully inched his way up towards the overpass. He kept dead center, not looking to either side as he climbed, trusting that the vaultie could follow relatively easily and praying she wouldn’t need help, because, damn it, that would mean he would have to look down. Once his feet met with mostly solid concrete he looked back to find the vaultie on his heels.

“Look here,” he said, pointing to a splash of white paint. “Rail sign. That’s how we communicate with each other. That one means ally. We have ones for ‘cache,’ ‘danger,’ and a few others I can show you.” He heard a hum of assent from behind and went on. “If you like that, we’ve got dead drops, ciphers, spy-speak, code names…”

“Secret handshakes?”

Deacon chuckled. “Don’t think I haven’t tried—”

Deacon heard a tell-tale gurgle ahead. A feral stumbled out from behind a car, close enough that he could see the skin peeling off the thing’s withered face. Deacon had his pistol half drawn when two shots rang out behind him. Bullets bit into the feral’s shoulder and neck and the thing stumbled and fell.

_Jesus._

Eyes wide behind his glasses, he looked over his shoulder to find the vaultie holding her pistol like she was surprised to find it smoking in her hands.

“Got any holy water?” Deacon said, jamming his own piece back into the holster hidden at small of his back. “I always wanted to try that on them.”

“Bullets are better,” she said, keeping her face carefully deadpan. “I’m not so sure the God holds much water with these ones. Or with anything, these days.”

“Holds much…heh. I see what you did there.”

She chuckled and Deacon ticked off another point in favor of humor. She liked irony, word games, old-world references. Puns, apparently. Dry as dust. Understated. Reserved as hell. She was kind of a dork.

She peered past him, and Deacon saw the Tourist in his sniper’s nest, glaring suspiciously with his rifle raised.

“Okay, you do the talking,” Deacon said, holding back so the Tourist wouldn’t hear him. “When we meet him, ask ‘do you have a geiger counter?’ That’s the sign.”

“What’s the countersign?” she asked.

Deacon paused, his head tipping to the side. “Read a few spy novels in your day?” he asked.

She shrugged, a little twitch of her shoulders. “Seen a few holos too.”

“Countersign is, ‘Mine’s in the shop.’”

Deacon watched her work the tourist with approval. The vaultie wasn’t quite _charming_ but she had a certain soft way of speaking that reminded Deacon of someone trying to soothe a frightened animal. She put the tourist at ease, speaking directly and calmly. She didn’t demand too much from the poor guy or crowd him, and she asked most of the right questions about the tactical situation below. The only problem was that she seemed to take it all at face value.

“So,” Deacon said, drawing her back down to where she’d killed the feral. “Through the minefield, or take the back entrance?”

“We’re probably going to have to deal with the mines at some point, but I’d rather do it once we get rid of the opposition. We should go around the back.”

“And do you trust the tourist? His intel?”

She pondered for a moment, staring into the horizon where a smattering of stars started to wink down at them. “I trust him. He’s just scared. Trying to do the right thing without risking his neck too badly.”

“Good. Instinct is a powerful tool in this business. It can save your life. Ninety percent of the time, people are on the up and up. The trick is figuring out the ten percent of the time they’re not.”

Her eyes grew sharp, and Deacon felt a faint _uh-oh_ echo in the back of his head. She crossed her arms over her chest as she stared him down. “Do you think I got this far on blind luck?”

_Well, it wasn’t charm that got you here._

“‘course not,” he said with a smile, and added _pride_ to his growing list of the vaultie’s traits. “This is a dangerous game. Synth replacements. Institute spies. You never know when they’re watching. I’m so used to explaining the basics, but you…you’re clearly not a rookie.” He bowed a little and gestured down the overpass. “Lead the way, oh capable one.”

~~~

Deacon wasn’t dreaming, he was sure of it. But he might as well be.

She cut a silent swath through the old Switchboard, crouched low, flowing around corners like her gun was the needle of a compass and the enemy was north, her focus split between taking down every single Gen-1 they encountered, and making sure they didn’t get caught doing it. The way she _moved._ Damn, if it wasn’t like watching an artist casually paint out a masterpiece, like anyone could do it. Deacon was no slouch, of course. He placed his feet carefully, wouldn’t send loose rocks skittering or old floors creaking and alert an enemy, and he could hold in a sneeze with the best of them. He took it easy, went slow. He went with the flow, tried not to get noticed. It worked for him. He didn’t really try, just kind of… ambled along, quiet-like and no one paid him any attention. Usually. But the vaultie _flowed._ Not quite like water because she didn’t take the path of least resistance. She was more like a landslide, slow, relentless, building up speed until the enemy felt the rumble of their impending doom beneath their feet, but by the time they turned to face it they were already dead, or half way there.

“So. This ain’t your first rodeo,” he said as he slid into cover behind a busted filing cabinet, trying not to look at a sprawled corpse a few feet away, its hair dyed Diamond City red.

 _Kelly K._ Damn. The firestarter themself. Deacon started to sweat.

 _You’ve been through this D,_ he thought. _Just one more HQ massacre._ But another voice, the tired, bitter one that had been getting louder and louder over the past year or two, chimed in. _How many more do you have in you? How many more people do you lose before it’s too many?_

The the vaultie ducked fire and then reduced a synth to its component parts with a few squeezes of the trigger.

“First rodeo? Not even my tenth,” she said, falling back into cover beside him. “Always did love a good stampede.”

“Ah yes, the trample of livestock. Nothing better.” Deacon ducked out of cover and aimed for a Gen 1’s leg, shattering the limb so the synth had to hop.

“It’s the event of the year out west. Cowboys as far as the eye can see. And co—brahmin, of course. You know way back before the war, they only had one head?”

And _that_ was a tell. Pre-war talk. It was almost a dare, except that he didn’t think he was supposed to know that she was pre-war herself. Deacon huffed a quiet laugh. “The cows, or the cowboys?” he asked.

She glanced sideways at him, midway through loading her 10mm and shrugged, her mouth twitching in a smile like the answer was a secret she wasn’t going to share. Yep. She was funny. Unfortunately she wasn’t funny enough distract Deacon from the oppressive loss of the Switchboard for any longer than the duration of her smile. They pushed forward and he watched her work in between checking the other bodies they came across, saying each agent’s name as he found their bodies one by one.

 _Maven_. Synth Maven. Who knew where the real one was. Maybe she’d never been human.

The vaultie’s eyes grew wider as they got deeper into the Switchboard, drinking in the tech and the security, and all the dead bodies.

“This is bizarre,” she said. “They must have been doing defense research down here.’ Her voice traied off and she muttered something disdainful that sounded like ‘ _Americans’_ as she set herself down to hack a security terminal.

“Didn’t work too well, did it? I think we’re about two centuries past Midnight at this point,” Deacon said as he glanced at another body. _Ms. Boom_. He knelt and searched her gear bag for the pulse mines she hadn’t had time to lay down during the attack. Blindsided, no room to maneuver. No warning. It was a wonder any of them made it out. When he looked up, he found the vaultie staring at him, eyes slightly narrowed.

“Got that thing cracked yet?” he asked.

She started like she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing and hastily turned back to the terminal. He heard her counting down the lockout under her breath: _Cinq-quatre-trois-deux-un..._

“Try 1-2-3-4. That’s hacking _gold_ right there.” He didn’t bother to mention the terminal he’d hacked on their way in had been layered with at least three more levels of encryption then the one she was currently pecking at.

“Helpful,” she replied, hitting a button. A second later the terminal beeped in protest and locked her out again. She cursed, another one of those funny French swears.

Deacon did a circuit of the room, looking for anything useful, listening to her brute force her way through the code. Deacon wondered absently how many tries he’d give her until he’d have to show his hacker's hand. Another note: _Vaultie is not a computer person. Add that to ‘not a people person’ and definitely ‘an animal person.’_

“ _Tabarnak_ , I hate computers.” Then, there was a beep and the locks on door ahead tumbled open. She made a little noise of triumph and stood. “Are we done here?”

“After you,” he said.

They found Tommy Whispers in the safe room.

 _Tommy-boy, you glorious old fool,_ Deacon though. There he was, lying broken in the wake of his last stand, trying to protect the files and get the prototype all at once. It was what any agent would have done, but Tommy Whispers man, he was something else. A friend. He’d been a friend.

“There it is.” Deacon pointed to the stealth-boy sitting on a shelf in the back of the saferoom, “Carrington’s prototype.”

“This thing?” She picked it up and hefted it in one hand. “Looks like any other stealth boy. Heavier though.”

“That’s the one. I doubt it’s actually a stealth boy.”

Deacon knelt by the corpse. Tommy died in a sprawl, like he was making a run towards the enemy and had tripped. Deacon reached out to touch him, fingers thick and buzzing with aversion.

_Steady, Dee. Play it easy._

“Hang on…” he said and lifted Tommy’s arm. The dead agent’s curled stiffly around an item in each hand: A holotape, and a gun. “Ah, there it is.” Deacon pulled the firearm from Tommy’s stiff fingers.

Deliverer. It was an amusing name for a gun that helped see packages safely to their destinations, though Deacon always thought Tommy Whispers had intended the name to have a bit more gravitas. Perhaps the name could mean both: Mailman. Savior. Delivered from evil, always on time. Or whatever. Deacon checked the little gun over with a twinge of regret that it still contained half a clip, like Tommy didn’t get to finish the fight before he went down.

The vaultie approached him carefully and Deacon pressed Deliverer into her free hand.

“What’s this?” she asked, looking the gun over, her fingers sliding along the silencer before extending her arm to check the sights. Deacon used the moment her eyes were averted to pry the holotape from Tommy’s other hand, keeping his back between her and the corpse.

“It’s called Deliverer,” he said over his shoulder, slipping the tape into his pocket. “Belonged to this guy here, Tommy Whispers. He died protecting the Railroad’s secrets.” Still on his knees, he touched Tommy’s shoulder. _Poor guy._ “He’d want you to have it.”

Her eyes slid from the gun to the corpse, her eyebrows flying up. “ _Me_? Why?”

“Don’t let its size fool you,” he said, popping to his feet. “Tinker Tom restored this gun just for Tommy. It’s discreet, it’s got stopping power, and best of all, it’s silent. You’ll never find another gun like it.”

“Wouldn’t an actual Railroad agent want this? I can’t just _take_ it.”

“Too late. It’s yours. If things go right, which they have so far, you’ll be an _actual_ Railroad agent once we get back to to HQ and you give Dez that prototype.” _And I hand off the holotape._ “Call Deliverer a...uh...token of faith. From me. And Tommy.”

Her face was thoughtful as she weighted the gun in her left hand, the prototype in her right. “All right, I’ll take it. Now how do we get the hell out?”

Twenty minutes later, they emerged from the Slokum’s basement and crawled into a bule-dark night and the waiting arms of a minefield. One thing was sure, it was definitely much easier to navigate the deathtrap when they weren’t running from a hoard of Gen 1s. A few sentries showed up here and there, but Dacon picked them off while the vault dealt with the mine. Mines beeped their warnings as they picked their way past, and Deacon’s heart migrated to his throat each time she ducked down to disarm one.

Disarming bombs was yet another skill he added to the list of shit he didn’t think pre-war folks would know how to do.

“You’re really good at that, you know,” he said as she stuffed another frag into her backpack. “Almost _too_ good.”

The only reply he got was a shrug and another final beep of a disarmed mine.

They reached cover on the edge of Lexington. The vaultie dropped to the ground, breathing hard, a thin sheen of sweat making her face shiny. She swiped her brow, leaving a trail of dirt across her forehead.

“You alright there, pal?” Deacon asked, settling down nearby.

“Mines,” she panted, “are the worst.”

“Worse than terminals?”

She huffed and passed him a can of purified water. Her hands shook.

“So, ready to wow Desdemona with our spectacular success?” Deacon asked.

The vaultie shook her head. “I need to make a stop. It’s slightly out of the way, but I don’t know when I’ll be this close again. I can meet you back at the Old North Church in 48 hours.”

“You know, I could use a bit of a walk-about. What do you stay I tag along?”

“Keeping an eye on your ‘token of faith’?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m like a bad penny. I’d just show up again eventually. Really I just wanna enjoy the fresh air and riveting company.”

“I’m just going to assume you’d follow me if I said no. Be warned, I’m feeling a little stabby after all that gunplay.”

“Point taken,” he said, holding up his hands. “…heh… _point_.”

The light from her Pip-Boy was just enough for him to catch her eyeroll. “You can come, but it’s going to be boring.”

“I _like_ boring. I’m all about long, lazy, dull days.”

“ _Bon_. Come on, it’s not far from here,” she said, rolling to her feet.

True to her word, they reached their destination in under two hours, in the weird sliver of time between dead at night and obscenely early in the morning.

Deacon knew the spot: Starlight Drive-In. He followed the vaultie across an expanse of shattered asphalt and the hunched shadows of rusted-out cars. A massive, half-intact screen dominated the far end of a parking lot like a blank monument to the old world, utterly drained of purpose. No more vids played across the screen, just shadows.The vaultie stopped at the edge of the last line of cars and Deacon lurked a few paces behind, smelling smoke from a fire. Beyond that there were no signs of life. Whoever set up camp had done an excellent job of hiding it.

She whistled softly and Deacon winced at the sudden sound in the dark. The silence in response stretched on so long he thought no one was there, and then a dog barked.

Dogmeat trotted towards them, followed by a man. Cowboy hat, duster jacket, dark skin. This was the man who had taken his people to Sanctuary. The one the vaultie had helped the night she’d thawed out to find her husband dead and her son missing, and then emerged into a brave new Commonwealth. And for her first trick? She’d taken on a deathclaw and _won._ Hell of a way to wake up. The memory of her pounding up the suburban roadway and falling out of that suit of power armor still shook him a little. He might have blown his cover that night if she hadn’t managed to treat her own injuries.

“Jeanne?” Preston Garvey lowered his laser musket. “You’re alive.” The Minuteman smiled, relief and shadows smoothing his features.

“Why is everyone so surprised when I show up in one piece?” she asked, looking up from where she’d dropped to one knee to greet her whining, overjoyed dog. Preston looked abashed for a moment until the vaultie laughed. “It’s fine, Preston. I’m alive.”

“Who’s your friend?”

Deacon’s feet attempt to stage a coup and turn him back into the shadows, but he resisted the urge and cleared his throat instead.

“Bodyguard,” he said with a cheerful smile, acutely aware that he looked like anything but. “Name’s Deacon.”

Preston stared at him hard for a moment. “Preston Garvey,” he said and turned to the vaultie, scepticism radiating off of him in near-visible waves. “If you need someone to watch your back, I think we could spare someone—”

“He may look harmless,” the vaultie said, “but Deacon is _very_ good at his job.”

Her words were _not_ for Preston’s benefit. He didn’t miss the flash in her eyes as she stared Deacon down. He just smiled and gave Dogmeat a friendly scratch when he came to say hello.

“Hey, you fuzzy bastard,” Deacon said. When he failed to manifest any snacks, Dogmeat huffed and trotted off, evidently deciding that if Deacon didn’t have treats, he wasn’t worth the time. Deacon chuckled. “I see how it is, pal.”

Preston lead them to a fire around the back of the building, burning hot and smokeless. The vaultie settled down on a crate with a little groan. A pot of something meaty sat nearby, and Preston passed out some cracked camp bowls filled with the stuff.

“How’s your head?” Preston said, settling down next to the vaultie on his own crate.

Her hand drifted up to brush the fresh scar running down the side of her face. “Much better. The hubflower poultice helped with the inflammation just like you said it would.”

“I’m glad,” Preston said, staring into his bowl, pushing the contents around with his spoon without eating. It seemed like there was something on his mind besides the vaultie’s new scar.

Deacon sat on the other side of the fire from the two, eating the radstag stew in little bites. Something tight and anxious in his chest started to ease as he listened to Preston and the vaultie talk about blueprints for generators and patrol route scheduling. Nice, normal talk. No lies between the two. And she knew that Deacon was there, no doubt listening. It was a pleasant change, being able to watch the vaultie without the stresses of maintaining cover. And then, Deacon paused mid-bite as the conversation took a turn.

“Preston…I can’t. What you’re asking me is impossible.”

“We _need_ a leader. Ever since you found us in Concord...I’ve had _hope_. That we _can_ make a difference. That _you_ can make a difference. We can make the Commonwealth really something.” Preston’s face shone bright with firelight and conviction, but Deacon’s eyes were on the vaultie.

She smiled, a bemused expression softening her features. “The Minutemen already have their General.”

“What? No, they—”

“I can’t be that person,” she cut in. “I’ve _got_ to find my son. I can’t have a bunch of people—settlers, militia—relying on me while while I’m chasing leads into god knows what hell. I’ll help. You know I will, but… Preston. The Minutemen already have their leader. It’s you.”

Preston looked scandalized. “I can’t just appoint myself General.”

“You just tried to appoint me.” They fell quiet for a moment, the vaultie’s finger tapping her knee as she thought.

“Put it to a vote,” she said at last.

“A vote?”

“Sure. You’ve got…” she ticked the settlements off on her fingers, “Oberland Station, Tenpines, the Abernathy’s farm. Plus this spot once you get the radio tower up, and Sanctuary Hi—Sanctuary.” She took a breath before plunging onward. “That’s a decent amount of people who support the Minutemen in this area.”

“I suppose...with enough people…”

She nodded. “Democracy doesn’t always work but when you have limited options it makes people feel good about putting others in power. Or bad…depending on who wins. And what they do with the power.”

Preston shook his head and Deacon suppressed a grin. The vaultie seemed to have her feet firmly planted in the _power corrupts_ camp. Good sign.

“You’ve got my vote,” Deacon said from across the fire. “Capable, handsome guy like you? You’ll sweep the competition.”

Their heads snapped towards him in unison like they were surprised to find him there. 

“Uh…thanks, but I don’t think there’s any competition to sweep. I’ll think it over.”

Deacon offered to take first watch and was a bit surprised when the vaultie didn’t follow Preston to hunker down in the nearby building for the night. They sat in silence for a while. Deacon stretched his legs out before him and rolled his neck, taking count of the day’s aches and pains as they made themselves known with little twinges. The vaultie stared into the dying fire for a while before she drew Deliverer and took it apart with slow, careful hands, dropping the clip into her lap and then unscrewing the silencer before fishing a rag from a pocket to give it a polish. Unlike Preston, she didn’t appear to have anything she wanted to say.

He watched her clean the gun and put it back together, and suppressed a jump when she finally spoke, her voice a little hoarse. “It’s probably not worth much coming from an outsider but…I’m sorry for what happened in there. To Tommy Whispers, and Maven. And your other agents. I don’t know all their names.”

He watched her tap an absent pattern across Deliverer as she held in her lap.

“All part of the game,” he said. He managed an even tone, pushing down the little twist in his gut that always accompanied a poorly executed lie. “Sometimes you lose big. I’m hoping we can pull a win on the next one.”

“Of course,” she said. “But you never get used to it, no matter how much it happens.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“In this world? I think everyone has some experience with loss.”

“In this world, or any other,” he said.

It earned him a sharp look as she stood, clipping Deliverer to her belt. She stared at him over the fire for just a beat too long before she left the fire to catch some sleep, Dogmeat on her heels.

Deacon’s first watch turned into second as well. No need to wake either of them when he was used to functioning on less than no sleep for days at a time.

The vaultie slept curled around Dogmeat for most of the night, no doubt sharing warmth, until dog came to keep Deacon company as the sun made its appearance, washing the morning fog in orange. She woke soon after, sleep mussed and shivering, huddled near the fire Deacon had built back up to heat last night’s stew. He could hear Preston snoring gently from his bunk in the little projector shack.

“You didn’t sleep,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not much in the habit,” Deacon replied.

“So that’s what the sunglasses are for,” she said, keeping her voice low. “To hide the bags under your eyes.”

She was curious about him. She’d learn soon enough that all curiosity would get her was a migraine.

“You got me,” he said, “I’m horribly vain.”

She huffed, and served herself some half-warm stew.

~~~

“So, you lived.” Desdemona looked down on them with barely controlled scepticism and Deacon could almost hear the vaultie grinding her teeth.

The second grand Railroad reception mostly matched the first. Gloy and Drummer were there, minus the guns, but Dez was still committed to aggression and making things more complicated than they needed to be.

“It was _unbelievable_ ,” Deacon said, launching into his entirely believable, concise and carefully constructed story. “I took a shot to the knee and she patched me up, threw me over her shoulder, and took out 100 Gen 1s.”

“100 Gen 1’s? Really?” Desdemona’s voice had that I don’t-believe-you edge to it.

“We found the prototype… and Tommy Whispers. He died keeping the Institute’s greedy little hands off our tech.”

Desdemona nodded and her posture relaxed. _Message received._ Deacon wasn’t quite done with his story though. “And on the way out? She disarmed an _entire minefield_...and here we are.”

“Is any of that true?” Desdemona asked, looking down at the vaultie.

“Most of it. He forgot about the bear that chased us _through_ the minefield,” the vaultie said, flat-eyed and sounding bored.

“The _what_?” Desdemona snapped.

Oh, _man._ The vaultie’s humor couldn’t get any drier if she’d been left out on a clothesline for a week. The only tragedy was that she didn’t _quite_ have her Wastelander lexicon down.

“You know, _yaoguai_ ,” Deacon said. “They call ‘em _bears_ in the Capital Wasteland.” As far as Deacon knew, no one else in the room had been to D.C. so it was a safe enough cover.

“Bear, yaoguai, whatever,” Desdemona said, waving away the words like they buzzed in front of her nose. “Point is, you’ve made quite an impression on Deacon. He’s never spoken of—or lied about anyone so highly before. I expected this to be a full team operation, but just the two of you, clearing out the Switchboard? I must say, I’m impressed as well.”

“You’d be crazy not to sign her up, boss,” he said, but Desdemona silenced him with a cut of her hand. Deacon held his breath.

“Is it enough earn me an in?” The vaultie stood stock still, her feelings buried under several layers of control, but the corners of her mouth and eyes were tight and Deacon suspected she was holding her breath as well.

“I think you’ve more than earned it,” Desdemona said, eyeing prototype that the vaultie held before her, no doubt adding the holotape that sat in Deacon’s coat pocket to the equation of worthiness. “This _is_ unprecedented. No one has ever joined the Railroad and gained immediate access to HQ. But none the less, welcome to the Railroad, agent.” Desdemona said it as if intoning the closing words to a prayer. She always did have a flair for the dramatic.

The vaultie offered a curt nod Deacon finally exhaled.

“Glad to be aboard,” she said.

Desdemona took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. “Now we need to know what to call you. Security is the heart of our operation, and code names are part of that. What’ll it be?”

Deacon had been present for so many agent namings over the years. Drummer Boy, Glory, Tommy Whispers, Caravan, Maven, Tenderfoot, Downy, Boxer, Kelly K.…the list went on. No one practiced the old religions any more, but Deacon always felt that witnessing these moments was a little bit like watching a baptism. A moment of rebirth. Not that the vaultie was a stranger to new names.

 _Sophie Deckard. Jeanne._ He wondered what she would pick for herself here. Honestly, Deacon was still rooting for Prickes _._

The vaultie’s posture straightening, her arms clasped behind her back. Not for the first time, Deacon wondered if she was ex-military.

“Fixer,” she said.

... _really?_ How utterly...boring. He was almost disappointed. Of all the codenames...still, he supposed it was innocuous enough. Stabby McGee or Pre-War Popsicle might be a little too much out in the field.

 _Fixer_. It was simple, practical. Inspired confidence. It suited her.

Desdemona _almost_ managed a smiled. “From what I hear, that is fitting.”

Deacon rubbed his hands together. “Come on, Fixer. I’ll take you to meet the _whole_ family.”

Thank god, he could _finally_ stop calling her ‘the vaultie.’

They did the usual rounds. Drummer Boy already had stars in his eyes and no doubt believed they’d taken on 100 Gen 1s and won. The meeting with Tinker Tom went better than expected. Their resident maniac was an _acquired_ taste. Luckily, she turned down Tinker’s anti nanoblood serum.

Throughout the introductions Fixer explored HQ like a cat in a new place, slowly sniffing in corners, eyes wary as as she met some other agents who were laying low: Duster, Union Jack, and a handful of comm specialists who hung out in HQ between missions and worked on updating and re-encoding ciphers and tracking Institute salvage missions for disruption. Deacon sorely wanted to stick around to see their techie’s reactions—especially Tom’s—when Dez gave them the greenlight to set up firmware on the two dozen HAM radios carefully scrounged and restored over the past two years. Dead Drops had been clever at the time, but they was _John D’s_ legacy, designed almost two decades ago and overdue for another redesign by about half a decade. It was well past time the Railroad got some upgrades.

Speaking of Dez, Deacon should probably hand over the tape. He left Fixer as she started talking Carrington about radiation sickness treatment and headed to Desdemona’s command station. The boarded up well was littered with maps and ashtrays and all manner of random detritus that seemed to grow like moss all over HQ.

“Present for you,” he offered, dropping the holotape on the table.

“Well done,” she said. She leaned in, intent, her eyes bright and suspicious. “Now make sure your pet project doesn’t get out of hand. She’s your responsibility. You’re the one who pushed it. You’re the one who deals with training and fieldwork.”

“At this point,” Deacon said, “I’m pretty sure she’s the one who needs to be training _me._ ”

“Whatever, Deacon. Just…”

“I got you, boss. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“It’s my _job_ to worry,” Dez said with a huff and turned back to her map.

He found Fixer and Glory in a corner. Glory had her arms crossed over her chest, one leg kicked over the other as she leaned against the wall. Fixer sat perched on a stool, elbows on her knees as they talked.

“Not that I ever beleive anything Deacon says, but 100 Gen 1s?”

Fixer shook her head. “He was exaggerating. It was more like 30.”

“She’s just being modest,” Deacon said.

Glory didn’t spare him a glance. “So, how’d you do it?”

Fixer smiled, that little one that meant she was proud of herself, or maybe she was in on a joke no one else knew. “Low and quiet,” she said. “They never see me coming.”

“Great.” Glory groaned and tossed Deacon a look at last. “Another one.”

Fixer’s little smile turned wide. “That’s right _Minigun_. A little finesse keeps me from getting shot. Most of the time.”

“Look,” Glory said, sounding gruff, though Deacon could see the barest hint of smirk. “Carrington just gave you your first run. I was supposed to take it, but you need some fieldwork. So, take care of H2-22. It’s terrifying, being out of the Institute for the first time.”

“I can imagine,” Fixer said. Deacon thought she probably could.

Glory’s jaw set in a way that told Deacon he might want to back up a step. “No. You can’t. Not unless you’ve been through it.”

“And you’ve been through it?” Fixer’s expression shifted, brows drawing down as her tone softened. Deacon hoped she wouldn’t get weird the way some agents did when they met their first Synth. Then again, not everyone was best pals with Nick Valentine.

“That’s right,” Glory said. “Pretty shocking that you can’t tell the difference, huh? It doesn’t matter what Desdemona says—We’re not human. We’re constructed, bone by bone, muscle by muscle. Makes it kind of difficult to figure out how you fit in the world.”

“All I know about Synths is that they—you look human and the Institute treats you like shit.”

“Like slaves,” Glory corrected. “They’re so afraid of Synth free will they don’t even want Gen 3’s to show loyalty to the Institute, just mindless obedience to it.”

“Do other synths work for the Railroad?”

Glory laughed. “Not that I know of. I'm out and proud. A special case. ”

“I can see that,” Fixer said, looking at the other Heavy with a steady gaze, that slight smile returning.

Glory opened her mouth and then closed it, and cleared her throat. “Just...be careful out there, okay? The Railroad needs good people, and Synths need the Railroad. Every synth that makes it out? There’s a round on me.”

Fixer nodded. “I’ll hold you to it,” she said. “I like rum and Nuka.”

Deacon filed _that_ little exchange away for later and gestured broadly. “Come on, there’s one more person I want you to meet.”

He brought her to the reports room, and prodded P.A.M. into her Human-Machine interface.

“Uh… hello,” Fixer said, head tilting to the side as she stared up at P.A.M.

“Processing. Agent. Fixer. Your arrival was not calculated.”

“Was it supposed to be? Who are you?”

P.A.M.’s processors clicked and hummed away, and then she said, “Preliminary adjustments to statistical models complete. Initiating calculations. I was, am, and will most likely be P.A.M. Predictive Analytic Machine.”

“Do you work for the Railroad?” Fixer’s eyes flicked towards Deacon and then back to P.A.M.

“Yes. The Railroad provides data. I provide first order approximations of all life forms in regional designation: The Commonwealth.”

“You must be pre-war,” Fixer said.

“Correct. I was reactivated at former Defense Intelligence Agency Facility, designated: Switchboard.” There was another pause and click of processors. “Process complete. Calculations inconclusive: Agent Fixer, impact on Railroad operations. No previous models predict your presence or existence. You are a rogue variable. Agent Deacon: do you wish to add the rouge variable to current statistical projections?”

“Why the hell not?” he said. “What’s the worst that could happen? No...no, don’t...answer that.”

“Recalculating. Machine-human interface terminated.”

Fixer backed away as P.A.M. shut down. “I’m not really sure what just happened there,” she admitted. “Is this how all of your new agents are welcomed?”

_No._

“Yeah, it’s part of our hazing process. Freak out the new guys with calculus,” Deacon said. “Really, don’t worry about it. Pammy’s just covering our bases. She needs some time to integrate you into her...math things. Algorithms. Whatever it is she’s doing.”

_Predicting how good of a fulcrum you’re going to be, Fixer, or if you’re going to be one more constellation moving around a fixed point in a perceived pattern that fools use to tell the future._

“So,” he said, bright and eager. “Just say the word when you want to head to Bunker Hill.”

Fixer glanced up from the map on her Pip Boy with a raised brow. “You don’t have better things to do then follow me around Boston? Hotshot spy shit or something?”

“My job is intel. The more places I go, the better I am at doing it. And you? You are just one big, beautiful distraction. Plenty of opportunity to learn secrets moving around in your shadow.”

Not for the first time, he realized it was going to be tricky for her to do undercover work with just how _new_ she looked, untouched by the ravages of the wastes. Too pretty. Too clean, even with the smudges of road dirt across her nose and chin. It wasn’t a bad thing. While everyone was busy looking at Fixer, he’d be busy looking everywhere else.

With a finger poised over her Pip Boy like she forgot what she was doing, Fixer looked like she wanted to say something. Instead she snapped her mouth shut. “Fine. Let’s go meet this Old Man Stockton. Drummer Boy said to use the back entrance?”

“Exactly. Don’t want to burn the hideout.”

“One second,” she said, and dropped her pack. She bent, fishing around for something and rose, triumphant, a familiar blue rectangle in her hands, and Deacon’s stomach tried to jump in two directions at once. She shoved the book into his chest. “I think this belongs to you,” she said.

“Good reading?” He took the hollowed out copy of Catch 22 and flipped open the cover to find the container empty.

“It was illuminating,” she said, pulling her pack closed with a jerk of the drawstring.

“Thought it might be,” he said.

“And creepy,” she continued.

“Totally creepy. But a pretty useful manual on the compelling but somehow hollow nature of authority and the frustrations of esoteric operating procedures,” he said. “One of my favorites.”

She shot him a _look_. “So you’ve read it?”

Was that a sliver of pre-war snobbery showing? Pre-war Ghouls sometimes had that same problem.

“Of course. I never recommend a book I haven’t read.”

Deacon stashed the book in his lock box and escorted Fixer to the back entrance. He felt the eyes of every agent in HQ burning into his back, and a glance over his shoulder told him he was right. He could feel the gossip starting already: Deacon, notorious loner. The agent who disappears for months at a time. A comedian, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Deacon, teaming up with some random new gal who had strong-armed herself into HQ in under seventy-two hours.

Deacon didn’t bother to speculate on the betting pools that would spring up as soon as the door closed behind them. The “who will yawn first” pool had lost its fun weeks ago when Carrington proved to everyone that he got sleepy long before Desdemona ever did. Deacon didn’t begrudge HQ their scuttlebut. What were a bunch of sweet little mole rats supposed to do in their boring underground den but gossip and gamble as they waited for more bad news and the next life and death assignment?

Glory met Deacon’s eyes through his glasses, a feat she’d mastered years ago. Desdemona had never managed the trick, and she’d known Deacon even longer.

The tilt of Glory’s head seemed to ask: _What are you doing, Deacon?_

He offered Glory the smallest of shrugs.

_I’m not sure, but I can’t wait to find out._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Look! We made it! Human interaction! Jokes! Tentative friendliness! Only 2 (?) threats of bodily harm! 
> 
> Spring is always a busy time for me so expect updates to be slow. I’m aiming for monthly but I may need to take a break. You can always come bug me on tumblr @probably-a-synth.


	10. Omelette sans Fromage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for brief mention of suicidal ideation/risky behavior. Also I promise the chapter title is relevant? IDK Deacon would love that meme anyway.

~~Jeanne~~ Fixer

Jeanne could see all of South Boston from the top of the stone spire. On the horizon, land jagged out into the bay, and darkness crept towards the ocean from the west. It would be dark in an hour or so and the sunset colored the long, trailing clouds tangerine and berry across the delicate blue of the sky. 

This high, Jeanne could almost forget that the buildings below were ruined and that the little ants crawling through the twisting wreck of the city could be raiders or monsters. She could almost forget that the threat of radiation lurked even where other dangers didn’t. 

Below was the stuff of nightmares, but she could almost feel safe up here, sixty meters above it all. She could pretend for just a moment that the world had never changed, and that Nate was on his way up the spire to look down at the city with her, just like they’d done the day they walked the Freedom Trail. Getting up the endless flights of stairs to the top of the monument six months pregnant had been no small feat. She had needed to rest at the top for nearly a half hour. Nate entertained her by pointing out landmarks: The USS Constitution, The Old State House, Jamaica Plains, Quincy. Boston Airport, Boston Harbor and the shipyards. 

Jeanne inhaled deeply and found the air less tanged with ozone and radiation dust than it was on the ground. She peered down from the arrow slit of a window to watch the people wandering Bunker Hill. She found the trading settlement somehow both bizarre and boring, so driven by caps that their leaders agreed to some protection racket with actual raiders. From Jeanne gleaned when she proclaimed herself a trader up from Quincy, the area surrounding Bunker Hill has always been prime raider territory so the traders bought off their problems instead of having to mow them down every season like persistent weeds.

Despite the questionable deals, the scrap trader bought her junk without question, even the disassembled desk fans that she’d stripped of screws. Deacon had laughed at the sheer amount of crap she unloaded, and Jeanne was honestly not surprised by his attitude; she had noticed a distinct Commonwealth stigma against scavvers. Piper, Deacon, and even Nick had all complained that that the things she picked up were worthless scrap, utter garbage.

But Jeanne didn't see anyone else trying to build generators or water purifiers besides the Minutemen, and she had a long list of things Preston and Sturges needed. If the rest of the Commonwealth was content to live in squalor, sneering at scavengers instead of trying to build something better, that was their prerogative. But if picking up garbage and making it useful was what Jeanne had to do in order to help build settlements that were actually livable, then she was damn well going to pick up garbage. 

Leaning further out the window, she tried to spot Deacon below, but there wasn’t a bald head in sight, just hats and full heads of hair. He could be any of them, she supposed. She’s wasn’t sure what to make of Deacon, or exactly how to deal with him. If she knew one thing, it was that she was being _handled,_ and carefully. The way he positioned himself around her spoke to his character more than his words did. 

If she knew one thing about Deacon, it was that his words were no good. The laid back attitude, the jokes, the...friendly banterwas hiding something. He seemed like he’d done a lot of living _,_ though he could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. Her guess as to his age fluctuated, often by the hour. His gender (or his genders, perhaps) seemed to shift every so often as well, from solidly masculine to something undefinable but definitely not feminine, and back again as it suited him.

All she knew is that he was working hard to win her over, and if she hadn’t caught him spying, it might have worked. She liked him, in spite of herself. He was funny, in an irritating sort of way, and so far he’d been more than helpful. He vouched for her. He put her above him and let her make decisions despite his apparently veteran status in the Railroad. He’d given her Deliverer. A _very_ nicepiece of ordinance. If that wasn’t a bribe, she didn’t know what was. Jeanne tried not to get attached to weapons, but Deliverer was something else…She jerked her fingers away from the gun at her hip when she realized she’d been caressing the silencer. 

Feet scuffed on the stone stairs, loud enough to sound intentional. Deacon appeared soon after, one hand dragging behind him on the curve of the inner wall. She pushed away from the window and crossed her arms. 

“Enjoying the view?” he asked. He fidgeted, swinging his arms loosely like he wanted something to do with his hands. 

‘You can see how the world looked before,’ she wanted to say, though the words would betray her. And yet she suspected that he already knew. First step in handling Deacon was finding out how much he really knew. 

“Sure. The sunset is the best I’ve seen in awhile.” _In two centuries._ “I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your profile on me coming along?” 

“Oh, good question,” he said, thoughtful as he settled into the lone chair. He held up his hands to frame her with squared fingers. “I can’t quite get your chin right, but I think I’ve got your nose down pretty well.”

She rolled her eyes and turned her back on the window. “Cute. Come on, what have you got in my dossier?”

He dropped his hands, spinning his newsboy cap in his lap. “You speak French, swear a lot—mostly _in French_. You’re annoyingly perceptive, don’t like close quarter fights, and you have an inexplicable obsession with desk fans.”

“Seriously,” she said. “How much do you know about me?”

“Hey, you know...asking people if they know your secrets is a great way to broadcast that you’ve got secrets. That’s a no go in the wasteland, boss.” 

_Boss_? She pulled a face. That was a new level of positioning right there. _You’re the one in charge, so long as I’m the one controlling the intel._

“Take it from me, intel is worth its weight in caps out here, and the heavier your secrets, the more people are going to try and take ‘em from you. Why make it so easy?”

“Please. Spare me the hotshot pedantic bullshit for someone who needs it,” she said. He opened his mouth, half a laugh away from some pithy reply but she barreled over him. “Let's make this easy. If we’re going to work together, we’re starting with as clean slate as you’re able to give me. I get compartmentalization, but if you want a nice, friendly agent to run missions with, you tell me what you know. About me. Specifically.”

Deacon sighed. “I’m not sure all the intel in the world could make you nice and friendly,” he said with a little smile, kicking his big, dusty boots out in front of him to stretch. 

“You might be right.” Jeanne managed a mirthless chuckle she reached for the nasty little shiv she kept on her hip. She studied her hands, coated with greasy road dust so her nails were outlined in grime. She starting working the dirt out from under her nails, glancing up at Deacon from beneath her lashes. She wouldn’t stab him—probably—but a little reminder of their first meeting wouldn’t go amiss. 

“It’s nearing dark,” she observed. “We’ve got a package to retrieve in a few hours, and I’m not coming down until you tell me what you know.”

Deacon sat up a little at that, eyes on her knife. The look on his face wasn’t fear, just...suprise. And... _amusement._ Asshole. Well, if he was going to be a slippery _osti de marde_ she was going to be _têtu comme un âne_. No quarter. 

“I’m serious. You want to work with me? Tell me what you know.” 

Deacon scrubbed the back of his bald head and sighed. 

“It’s pretty obvious you’re a vault dweller. The Pip Boy is a dead giveaway.”

“Right,” she said. “Vault Dweller turned trader. That’s no secret.” 

“It’s pretty good cover. Salt the truth with some lies, spice it up with a few details, and people will believe anything as long as they don’t have to think too hard. Of course, it helps if the truth is so _fantastic_ it seemslike a lie.”

Her stomach dropped. He knew. Of coursehe knew. All the spying needed _some_ sort of payoff. 

“Oh?” she said, keeping her voice level. “Did you hear something fantastic?”

“I may have heard some rumors.”

She shook her head, leaning back against window so she must look like nothing more than a silhouette against the bright sunset. 

“Jesus, don’t lean—” She saw the bob of his throat as he swallowed hard, “—lean out the window like that.” 

Jeanne smiled at the thought that she was making him nervous. He knew where— _when_ she was from. Now she was going to make him say it. She continued to lean into the window frame, just wide enough that she _could_ slip back into nothing. It would be easy to… She laughed a little at the intrusive thought and worked a bit more grime from under her nail with the tip of her knife.

“Well?” she said.

Deacon shrugged, biting at his lower lip in a reluctant little grimace. “I miiiight have heard a rumor about you being pre-war.” The words hung between them. “Which is pretty ridiculous,” he said after a moment, “considering that you’re not a ghoul. You’re not a ghoul, right? I mean, I was a ghoul once. It’s why I’m so rad resistant. Skin grafts work wonders—”

“I am pre-war,” she said, cutting off his bullshit. “Vault 111. A cryo facility. A sick, pointless experiment by Vault Tec. I saw the bombs drop. You want some salty details to make it real? We made it underground just in time. The dust and debris from the fallout would have stripped the flesh from our bones if we hadn’t made it into the vault in time. I didn’t know light could be so bright, or so white.” Her words jerked from her and the world lurched in sudden vertigo at her brain reminded her that she had her back to a 60 meter drop. She pushed off from the windowsill and took a careful step forward. “We didn’t know they were going to freeze us. When I woke up, everyone else was dead except my child. Who is missing. He was six months old when they took him.” She paused a moment. Deacon watched her from behind those inscrutable sunglasses. “Any questions?”

He was quiet for a long moment, as if ingrating her words into his mental dossier on her. She wondered how much, exactly, he had already known. 

“Allow me to welcome you personally to this hell known as the wasteland. Let me know if you have any questions. Oh, and your secret is fantastic. And totally safe with me.”

“You didn’t tell Desdemona?” she asked, surprised. “Or any of the others?”

“They only knows as much as they need to,” he assured her, tugging his cap back on his head. “Operational security and all. And I know it’s probably not worth much, but...I’m sorry. For your loss.” Her words from the other night at Starlight echoed back to her. _Sorry._ The Switchboard. His hands shook as he muttered names under his breath as they passed corpses and she pretended not to notice. 

Loss seemed like such an inadequate word for it all. Loss of her son, her husband, the whole world she’d known. But if she was being honest with herself, she’d been losing for a lot longer than the moment the bombs went off. What was she supposed to say to someone’s empty sympathy? 

“Not as sorry as me,” she said after a moment. It seemed adequate.

“I’m sure,” he said with a nod. His mouth twisted for a moment, teeth worrying at that bottom lip. Then he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Allright _Fixer._ Ready to wipe out some raiders and run your first package?”

Fixer... It would take some getting used to. Calling herself Saint again would have felt like bad luck. Saint had died in those Toronto squats when she’d met Nate. Sophie was born soon after, and died in the vault. Jeanne fit for now, felt true, but she couldn’t keep looking backwards.

“Ready,” she said. 

Deacon grinned. “You’ll be getting drinks on Glory in no time.”

Dogmeat met them at the gates, looking dashing in a bandana she’d found for him. No one looked twice at the slouching caravanner in the padded denim coat and newsboy cap as they slunk out of Bunker Hill and into the dark. People were staring at _her._ Her ass. Her hips. Her clean, white teeth, everything she had that these lean and hard Wastelanders lacked. 

_Big, beautiful distraction._ So this was what he meant. 

The rendezvous point was yet another dilapidated building in what Jeanne suspected was going to be a long line of dilapidated buildings. Deacon shadowed her half a block back, and Dogmeat ranged ahead, racing back when he was the first to find Stockton and the Synth.

Jeanne ducked into the building and scanned the room before giving the sign. Stockton relaxed and proclaimed his geiger counter was in the shop. 

“This is H2-22,” he said, gesturing to the pale, frazzled looking man who stood hunched in the corner. “H2, this is the person I talked to you about.”

Jeanne took a step forward, offering a small smile. “Good to meet you, H2-22,” she said, trying not to stumble over the oddness of his name. His...designation. Her throat constricted a little at the thought. 

_Not human_ , Glory said. 

_But people,_ Jeanne silently added. 

“Nice? To meet…me?” The synth sounded puzzled. His head jerked up when Deacon ducked through the crumbling doorway. 

Stockton nodded to the other agent and lit an old lantern in the window.

“Remember what I told you H2.” The synth nodded, pressing quivering lips together, and Stockton rounded on Jeanne. “Keep H2 safe. Someone will be here shortly to escort you.” The tourist gave H2 one last, sad smile and then he was gone.

Deacon installed himself at the door, looking casual except for the hunting rifle he held crosswise against his chest. That left Jeanne and H2 standing awkwardly in the middle of the moldering ruins of the—where were they, anyway? Another church? 

“I’m not supposed to talk to anyone,” H2 offered, unprompted. 

Jeanne huffed a little laugh and tried to suppress a smile. “Is that so? What aren’t you supposed to talk about?” 

“I’m not supposed to say _anything._ That’s with the Old Man told me. But I wanted to thank you. This world...it hurts me. My eyes. My b-body. You’ll get me somewhere safe.”

She couldn’t help but study the synth more closely. Everything about him was real and _human_ , from the near matted state of his filthy hair, down to his crooked front teeth and the dull weariness in his eyes. There was something sweet about him, an innocence that Glory utterly lacked. The two synths could not be more different, from the color of their skin to the timbre of their voices, to the way they responded to the world.

Jeanne couldn’t help herself. “I have a lot of questions,” she said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, “about the Institute. Do you remember anything?”

She saw Deacon shift from the corner of her eye, growing alert. 

“That’s what Old Man said I _shouldn’t_ talk about.” H2 said, his voice wavering. “At all,” he added.

A snake of guilt started to coil in her stomach and Jeanne held up her hands, about to tell him he didn’t have to when H2 hugged himself and started talking, his words slow and hesitant. 

“But I—I don’t remember much...not really. It’s all a blur. I remember helping...I worked maintenance. Every day for as long as as I can remember. I’d acknowledge orders from scientists. I never spoke to other synths outside of relaying information about work. I’ve—talked more in the past few...days than I have in my whole...life.” The thought seemed to dawn on him slowly, with a puzzled frown.

Jeanne felt another stab of guilt as she watched him realized he was free. “How did you escape?” she asked. H2’s face immediately closed. 

She cursed herself silently. _Wrong question, Jeanneie. Fixer. Whatever you call yourself now._

“No. Sorry. That’s the one thing I won’t talk about.”

“I—”

“ _No_ ,” he said again, more fiercely that he seemed capable of just a moment before, and suddenly she saw a bit of Glory in him. 

Jeanne heard footsteps, a rustle and creak of leather, and turned to find another person ducking into the little church. H2 shrank behind her like her scant height could hide him from the newcomer and Jeanne reached out a steadying hand. “Easy,” she murmured, and H2 nodded slowly, watching her with huge, pale eyes that made her insides squirm with the amount of trust they held.

“It’s the tower himself,” Deacon drawled, pushing off the wall when the newcomer held up his hands. “You got a geiger counter?”

The newcomer laughed, white teeth flashing against his dark skin. “Mine’s in the shop. Is that...Deacon? Still the same face!”

Deacon rubbed his jaw. “I’m fond of this one. Maybe it’s the ginger, I dunno.” 

“You’ve always been ginger, my friend,” the newcomer pointed out. “Or don’t they give you a mirror when you wake up on the slab?”

Jeanne cleared her throat and he turned from the easy banter to shoot her a lopsided grin.

“You’re the new guy, huh? Fixer. Heh. We’ve been needing a fixer. I’m High Rise.” 

Jeanne nodded. 

“I heard rumors about you,” he said, looking her over. She did the same, noting that he wore a leather jacket, jeans, and no armor except for a pair of beat up knee pads. He held a shotgun loosely, like it was an interesting stick he had just picked up from the ground to swing around. 

“From what I hear, you’re pretty impressive so far,” he said, giving her a nod. “Took care of Kellogg, walked the Freedom Trail, cleared out the Switchboard. Something about _yaoguai._ ”

“Someone’s been gossiping” she said, shooting Deacon a look.

“Not me,” he replied. “You want to find the gossips, talk to Tinker Tom and Drummer Boy. They’re worse than a couple of longshoreman gabbing over a barrel of mutated fish heads.”

“Gross,” she said. “This is H2-22.” The synth peered out from behind her. 

“Hey, H2. Let’s get you outta here. Get you a new name, a new face, and your life can begin.”

 _New face._ Jeanne shuddered at the thought. Deacon had mentioned it before, and now High Rise. She’d have to ask Carrington about the process, though the creepy surgeon in Diamond City might have more insight. Jeanne wasn’t sure she _wanted_ insight. 200 years later and medicine seemed to consist of plastic surgery, chem dependencies, and the cure-all of a stimpack. 

“I’ll take point,” High Rise was saying. “Dee, the rear. Just stay close, okay H2?” 

The synth nodded, and High Rise snuffed out the lamp before jogging out into the dark, shotgun at hip level. He lead them through the ruins and after a while Jeanne started to wonder what all the fuss was about. As if the thought summoned trouble, a bullet ricocheted a few feet away. She grabbed H2 and dragged him into cover behind an old dumpster.

“What—” he managed, but she put a finger to her lips, raising Deliverer and peering around the dumpster. 

“Raiders,” she said, recognizing the sound of pipe gun fire. “Don’t worry.” She whistled sharply when she saw Deacon moving up, and waved him to take her position so she could join High Rise as he exchanged volleys, closing in to watch his back. Dogmeat raced a few paces ahead of her, growling.

Jeanne raced forward, sticking low and behind cover. One of the raiders charged High Rise with a tire iron and took a scattershot to the chest, falling at his feet. Jeanne saw a flash of light glinting off metal and she snapped her sights on the raider above.

The fight stretched on for what felt like minutes, but each volley and subsequent dive into cover took no more than the span of a few breaths. A rifle kept cracking from behind, and Jeanne cursed as Deacon stole another of her marks while High Rise took care of the rushers. Raiders toppled like dominoes from the combined shooting. 

Jeanne took a knee to reload when something slammed into the low wall she huddled behind, and then the smell of unwashed body and the weight of a large human slammed her down. Light glinted off metal and Jeanne jerked to the side, the bite of a blade hitting her shoulder instead of her jugular. Her leather pauldron took most of the blow, but the tip of the knife still scored over her collarbone, splitting fabric and skin. 

She kicked upward, hard as she could, and her attacker fell forward onto her shoulders with a cry as she got him between the legs. With a tremendous grunt of effort and straining muscle, she used the momentum to flip them over in a backwards summersault. He landed hard on his back, Jeanne straddling him. 

Deliverer made a click and a gentle hiss as she squeezed the trigger, the barrell point blank against the raider’s temple. He slumped back with a grunt of surprise and she watched the life snuff out of his eyes. There was no splatter of gore, just a slow pool of blood gathering below his head.

And then, silence. 

“Clear,” High Rise shouted from ahead. 

“You’re bleeding,” H2 said, eyes round as marbles as Deacon lead him forward to join Jeanne and High Rise. A dark stain of blood soaked her drabs, and she rolled her shoulder, wincing as she felt the skin pull. She really needed to find a new outfit. Preferably something with some kevlar. 

“It’s nothing,” she said, pulling some scrap cloth from the first aid kit—if the meager collection of rags and stimpacks could be called such a thing. She stuffed the cloth into her shirt over the wound, enough to catch the blood and to keep most of the dirt out. “Let’s move.”

High Rise lead them through two more checkpoints, dealing with the raiders methodically, while Deacon guarded their charge and still managing to steal two of her killshots. There were going to need to have a little talk about that habit. 

Dark had truly fallen when they reached a towering apartment building and High Rise gave a little whoop of satisfaction. 

“There she is, home sweet home,” High Rise said, gesturing broadly. “Ticonderoga. I run the safest house in the ‘wealth.”

Jeanne felt like her whole life post-vault was a series of decrepit buildings. Inside, wires and ceiling tiles hung loose, and the stair access had all but collapsed. High Rise led them to an elevator and held the door. 

Jeanne muttered a curse under her breath as they packed into the little car, sandwiching H2 between herself and Deacon. She felt the synth shaking slightly, leaning into her arm a little more with each inhale-exhale of breath. She kept her own breathing slow and steady, wishing there was more space, or that there weren't four grown-ass people and a large dog packed into the tiny deathtrap.

The elevator chimed a friendly “going up,” and Jeanne braced herself for the jerky ride, wincing against erratic light and shadow. How elevators still worked when the world was otherwise falling apart around people's’ ears would forever be a mystery. Just one more weird half-life decaying in the post nuclear world. 

A dozen floors up they tumbled out of the elevator into a well lit lobby, teaming with with what Jeanne could only assume were synths and Railroad agents. 

“This is it?” H2 asked, looking from High Rise to Jeanne. Fixer. They knew her as Fixer. High Rise nodded. “Get that looked at,” he said to Jeanne—Fixer, nodding to her shoulder as he ushered H2 up some stairs. 

The synth looked back as High Rise pulled him along. “Thank you!” he said, raising a hand in a hesitant wave. 

Jeanne lifted her hand in response, winching as her shoulder twinged.

“Good old Tychon,” Deacon said behind her, looking up into the atrium. “High Rise is the best of the best.” 

Jeanne nodded and scanned the room. It was impossible to tell who is a synth and who was human by physical appearance, but she thought she saw slight differences. Some people moved with tense confidence, doing circuits of the safehouse or taking notes. Others hunched in corners, alone or with a few like them, arms wrapped around their own ribcages or hands fidgeting with small objects, or twisting fingers. These were the synths, she suspected, the ones who were scared, who were hiding. Body language was the only way to tell. 

“I need to get cleaned up,” she said, and Deacon steered her upstairs to a little room filled with beds, some chairs, and a stocked medical cabinet. He sat on a stool nearby the bench she flopped down. She peeled off her armor and shrugged out of one sleeve of her jumpsuit to bare her wounded shoulder. 

“Need a stimpack there, pal?”

She shook her head, wincing as she peeled the rag from her wound. “Those things are bad for your heart,” she said. “Won’t use it on a scratch like this.” She hissed a little as she irrigated the wound with a bit of water.

“All right Agent Badass,” he said, pulling a face.

She cleaned the slice as best she could and taped a bandage over top. 

It probably needed stitches but she didn’t want to bother. It would heal fine on it’s own, and what was one more scar? She’d have to find some hubflower and make a poultice tomorrow.

~~~

_“Sophie,” he whispers. The breath of her name on his lips sounds wrong as it flutters against her ear. She shivers. He looms above her, nips down her neck. She wants him to bite harder. The pain makes her feel real._

_“Que ferai-je sans toi?” she asks. He’s leaving her. He’s going to die soon, and she’ll be alone._

_“Sophie,” he says again, and now his mouth is lower, raising goosebumps as he runs his tongue along the sensitive underside of her breast. His beard tickles. He bites her, hard enough to bruise._

_“N'allez pas…” she begs, gasping. He rubs the hurt away with a gentle thumb before finding another spot to bite down. “N'arrêtez pas,” she moans._

_His fingers find her thighs and dig into their softness and then deeper, into muscle, leaving more bruises._

_“Sophie,” he says, and her name is filled with so much love. How can it sound so wrong?_

_She shivers, her mouth seeking his, moaning at the slow, warm slide of his tongue against hers as his fingers glide through the needy slick between her thighs, too slow. She needs more friction, more pressure. She wants it so much it hurts and he knows it, and just smiles into her kiss, making her beg like it’s all his idea, like she’s not the one who_ really _likes these sorts of games._

_“É t'en supplie,” she begs as he teases her. “N'allez pas…”_

_What will she do without him? What will she do? She can survive, sure, she is good at surviving, but Nate has a way of making her thrive, or at least he helps her glimpse what might lie beyond survival._

_“See you later, Fixer,” Nate says. He’s on the other side of the room now. He doesn’t kiss her goodbye, just wanders out the door to die and leaves her alone in the dilapidated room at the end of the world. She sits naked on the shitty mattress where they fuck every night, quiet and desperate, his hands pulling her hair, making her beg, making her laugh and gasp in turns, just the way she likes it, leaving trails of bruises that she counts later. She will never see him again, and there’s a baby in her belly and the light is so…_

~~~

Jeanne squeezed her eyes shut against the morning sunshine filtering through wall-to-wall polarized windows. The light would have been lovely if it didn’t hurt so much. 

The room smelled like old wood and mold and like someone was burning the cooking. It smelled like the squats on Bloor, just on the northern outskirts of the University of Toronto campus. She blinked, her heart squeezing in sudden panic, breath catching as she thought of what waited for her out beyond the clapboard walls as she blinked into the light. _Safehouse._ No, she wasn’t hiding in the Toronto safehouse cricut anymore, but she _was_ in a safehouse. And she wasn’t hiding from Americans with big guns. She wasn’t hiding— _Work backwards. Safehosuse. Tichon. Packaged delivery. H2-22._

She was at Tichon, in the room reserved as crash space for Railroad Agents. Three other beds crowded the space, but despite that, she was alone. Jeanne groaned and rolled over to burry her face in the bare mattress, the jacket she’d used as a blanket sliding over the edge of the bed to the floor.

Nate was starting to resent her. The more she put him off, the more demanding his memory grew. It had only been a matter of time before the dreams would start haunting her. The sex dreams didn’t surprise her. She always looked to sex for comfort and distraction when she was in distress. It sometimes caused problems. It’s why she and Nate fucked in the first place. 

“Damn it, Nate,” she whispered. For such an affable man, he truly was stubborn. If she could just buy a little more time, just a few more weeks suspending his memory so she could find Shaun…

Until then, denial. Copious denial. _Not now—_

Someone knocked. “Wakey wakey!” a cheerful voice—a now familiar voice called out. 

Jeanne peaked out from under her arm and saw Deacon leaning against the doorframe. She groaned and rolled onto her side, away from the intrusion. 

“I’m sleeping,” 

“There’s ‘breakfast.’” He put little air quotes around the word. 

She wrinkled her nose as she caught another whiff of burning food. “Is that what I smell?” She sat up and swung her legs over the lip of the mattress, sparing a glance for her neat pile of gear stacked in the corner. Deacon’s things were nowhere to be seen. She’d gone to bed before him last night. Had he slept in one of the other beds here? _Criss,_ had she talked in her sleep last night? 

Deacon nodded and pushed off the wall. He wore something new today, another outfit she’d never seen him in before. He looked like a farmer. “I promise you won’t want to miss this. High Rise is giving cooking lessons.”

She checked her wound on her shoulder and found it raw but no longer bleeding. She cleaned the cut, changed her bandage, and headed downstairs to find the lobby filled with smoke, shouting, and laughter.

“Sure, L7, Victoria, you can use some tato. Adds a bit more flavor,” she heard High Rise saying, and tried to catch a glimpse of him through the haze.

A few people stood around a stove and some hot plates, scraping pans or flipping pale, rubbery looking slabs of what Jeanne thought might be some sort of egg.

“That’s uh—easy on the flames there, sparky,” High Rise warned the cook who had control of the stove. “Oh, hey Fixer!” He waved a spatula in her direction and she waved back, wafting some haze away from her face. “We’re makin’ mirelurk omelets! Got a whole clutch of eggs yesterday.” High Rise turned back to his students. “Now, that’s the thing with ‘lurk eggs. If you get em, use em fast. They tend to...uh...hatch.”

Jeanne attempted not to make a face. Mirelurks…she’d run into a few of those on her way to Diamond City. Her stomach growled despite its self, and her grimace turned into a little smile when she realized everyone gathered around the kitchen was probably a synth. Cooking lessons...life skills. _Survival_ skills. 

Of to the side, H2-22 looked distraught while scraping something charred from his pan into the garbage. 

Her little smile turned into a grin. 

“Hey,” she said, and the young man looked up, eyes wide like he’d been caught stealing. “Want some help?”

“Uh...High Rise says cooking is an important skill. It’ll help us survive.”

Jeanne nodded. “He’s right. It’s a big part of taking care of yourself.” High Rise swept by, thrusting a plastic bowl of grayish-yellow goop in her hands. She assumed this was the ‘lurk egg all whipped up and ready to be made into an omelet. She kept her face carefully neutral as she gave the goop a stir, smelling a faint fish-and-salt odor. 

“This world...it’s hard,” H2 said. I hate it, a little bit.”

She handed him the bowl. “Do you regret leaving? Ah, the pan’s hot enough now, pour it in...”

H2 let the ‘lurk goop sizzle into the pan. “Not really. I’m scared, but people like you—and High Rise make me feel safer. Like I can do this. The above ground will just take a while to get used to.” 

Jeanne nodded, and instructed H2 on how to unstick the edge of the egg from the side of the pan and spread the goop back around, watching as the thing turned from liquid to rubber. “I’m not really used to the Commonwealth either,” she told him as they fussed over the omelet. The words felt dragged from her, but once they were out, she felt a little lighter. “I’m not really from around here.” 

H2 looked up watching her intently for a moment. She wondered what was going on inside that head—she tried not to think of the fine wires and the bits of circuitry that ran through the meat—and then he smiled. 

“Well, maybe that’s it,” H2 said.

“That’s what?” 

“Why I trust you. I liked you right away. Because you understand.”

Jeanne laughed a little, dropping her eyes back to the thing pretending to be an omelet rubberizing in the pan. She felt something warm creep up her cheeks, spreading from her chest. Affection. Poor kid was so lost out here. Couldn’t even make himself a goddamn breakfast. Then again, it always helped to have the right tools for the job. A _chicken_ egg, for example. A pan that wasn’t half rusted. Maybe some cheese. She wondered if cheese existed in this world. The two headed cows might make milk. 

“I think it’s done. See how the outside is kind of crispy? Any more and it’ll burn.”

H2 fumbled the slab of cooked egg onto a chipped dinner plate and stared at it. 

“So, that’s an omelet? We only ever ate specially formulated nutritional paste.” 

“That’s it. Your first omelet.”

He pushed the plate towards her. “It's for you,” he said. 

Jeanne opened her mouth to refuse the lump of ‘lurk egg, but the hesitant sort of hope blooming on H2’s face made her swallow her words.

“Thank you,” she managed, feeling another swell of something start to choke her up. She cut a bite from the edge and popped it into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she managed as the oddly fishy, probably egg based omelet assaulted her palate. She gulped it down, gagging a bit at the taste and texture.

“It’s not good?” H2 asked, vibrating with anxiety. 

She coughed and managed a smile. “Good,” she managed. “Hot.” 

H2 sighed in relief, a smile cracking his face in two. 

“Try making another one,” she said, casting a glance towards Deacon. He sat across the room, watching the scene with an expression that oozed smug indulgence. “I’m sure Deacon’s hungry.” 

As if he heard his name, Deacon glanced her way and raised his eyebrows over his glasses. They were red, unlike the ridiculous black wig he wore. She cut off another chunk of egg and popped it into her mouth, chewing definitely, trying not to shudder as she swallowed. He laughed.

A quiet feeling of contentment hummed in her chest by the time H2 inflicted an omelet on Deacon, and Dogmeat managed to get not one, but three whole breakfasts fed to him surreptitiously under the table. 

After breakfast she went back upstairs to pack, the contentment replaced by a violent sense of dread when she finally thought about what her next move had to be. 

“That was cruel and unusual of you,” Deacon said, sinking down on the bed across from where she went over her gear. “Mirelurk steaks are good. Their little egg babies? Not so much.”

Jeanne graced him with an expression of mild disgust. “Misery loves company, I think is the english idiom. Listen. I think it’s time we split up. I’ll be back to HQ in a week.” 

“Sick of the Railroad already?” 

“ _Juste toi mon ami,_ ” she said.

“Why do I get the feeling I was just insulted?”

Jeanne allowed herself a thin smile. “I’ve got some unrelated things to take care of,” she said. The impending trip to the Glowing Sea weighed heavily as she started thinking about all the new and painful ways ground zero would try to kill her. Nick said he’d go with her. She had power armor and anti rad meds. She’d be okay. 

“I get it,” Deacon said. “But whenever you get done with whatever it is you’re doing, come find me. This partnering up? It’s bizarre-o to me. But honestly, it’s been a nice change of pace. I think we should keep a good thing going. ”

She blew a sigh through her nose, studying him for a moment. He was ridiculous. An absolute goon. And he was right. They did make a good team. Their skills complemented each other. They moved at the same pace. And he was...a good guide: unobtrusive, observant, and helpful. He was exactly who she needed him to be, and he was doing it on purpose. And it _bothered_ her.

He passed her a little scrap of paper when she strapped on the last of her armor. “I want to give you something. My recall code.”

“Recall code?”

“It’s the code the Institute installed into my brain to reset me. I managed to get my hands on it before I escaped.”

“You’re a synth?” Doubt made her frown. 

“It’s only fair, since you told me about your fantastic secret.” That was...not what she was expecting. “There, I said it,” he said with a little laugh. “Really? Why not just be out about it, like Glory?”

“Secrecy is my business,” he said. “I’m not like most synths. I was one of the first Gen 3’s to get the old cranial reboot. Most synths have some happy memories. Family. Childhood. Me? Just a big swath of nothing. No idea what used to be there, but I imagine it’s a whole mess of cupcakes and trauma. Without the cupcakes.”

“That’s... do synths get new memories?” 

“New faces too. Keeps the SRB from hunting us down.”

“SRB?”

“Synth Retention Bureau. Nasty, cowardly bastards. They send out Coursers to retrieve escaped synths, and to keep an eye on their humans replacements.”

Jeanne frowned. The more she heard about the Institute, the more she wanted to utterly destroy it. Raize it to the ground. The...underground. Whatever. She started to unfold the little scrap of paper and Deacon lept off the bed, waving his hands.

“Don’t!” For a moment he looked as uncomfortable as the moment on the top of Bunker Hill when she leaned out the window. “Don’t read it unless it’s an emergency. That’s my cyanide pill. You say that out loud and it’ll reset everything. Bye-bye Deacon.”

“And you’re trusting me with this?” She waved the little scrap of paper at him, wondering what the hell his game was. If he _was_ a synth, that explained a good deal about...well, everything about him. And if he had no memories from...before...That must sting a little. Must make it easy for him to be whoever he needed to be in the moment.

“Sure I’m trusting you with it,” he said with a shrug. It was the first time Jeanne had looked, _really_ looked at him in full daylight. He kept to shadows and shade, or worked at night. Now she noticed a faint dusting of freckles across his skin, and the smile lines around his mouth, curving up in a little half smirk. Maybe he smiled so much because those stupid sunglasses always hid what his eyes were doing. “Call it another token of faith.”

They sat in silence, Jeanne looking at the paper in her hands. She thought of Glory, and the synths downstairs. She thought about H2 giving her the first meal he’d cooked for himself. She thought about Deacon, and how good he was already far too good making himself into the person she needed him to be, and it felt hollow. She smiled and unfolded the paper, expecting to see something. A series of numbers, a code. Instead she got a message written in a quick hand, t’s crossed sharply. 

You can’t trust everyone.

“Jesus, Fixer! Don’t—”

She read him the words on the paper, her voice flat and wholey unamused. 

Deacon groaned and started to convulse, falling back on the mattress. Jeanne’s stomach sank as she lept up. Seizure? Reset? Fuck, was she _wrong_? Then she heard him laugh, and he sat up.

“I had you going there, didn’t I?” He said through his laugh before his voice softened. “Don’t take it personal. I lie to everyone.” 

“You are unbelievable,” she said, her mouth hanging open, fingers curling around the note. She wanted to throw something at him. Something heavy, or sharp. Or both.

“Look,” he said. “There’s a point to my bullshit. You’re talented, and from where I’m sitting, brave as hell for dealing with this hellscape. It must be a nightmare. But you can’t get bogged down on that, because the Institute is watching, and they aren’t going to wait around for you to feel good about your little excursion through time. Partnering up can leave you vulnerable. Even if someone sounds sincere, they could be a synth replacement, or a spy. Counter intelligence is a real threat out here. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of it. You’ve got to know who you’re working with with.”

“Yeah,” she said, crossing her arms. “A liar.”

He chuckled. “I make no secret of it. It’s part of my shtick. Keeps people on their toes.” 

_And 1000 miles away from you._

She shook her head, feeling a little weight of betrayal sinking into her stomach. Maybe a bit of stinging pride that she’d been so willing to believe him. “Why lie?”

“More ‘hotshot pedantic bullshit,’ really,” he said, throwing her words from yesterday back at her. “I’m supposed to be showing you the ropes of the Railroad, so think of it as lesson…uh...thirty seven. Or something. I’m not really counting. Trust in this business is hard won and easily lost.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’re doing a wonderful job of it. If you’re campaigning for the most irritating person in the Commonwealth, it’s working. I don’t like being lied to.” 

Deacon sighed, slipping back into seriousness as he studied his knees. “My... _relationship_ with the truth rubs people the wrong way. But, if you believe one thing...its…” he struggled with his words for a moment and looked up at her, shoulders slumped in defeat, drawing in on himself as she thought that maybe he actually made eye contact with her from behind his glasses. “I’m in your corner. Always have been.” 

“Yeah. Since at least Diamond City,” she said. “I’ll be back at HQ in a week. Can you make sure Desdemona has something for me to do by then?”

He flashed her a fleeting smile. In the brightness of the room the lines in his face looked eased. He seemed young, boyish. “You got it boss. I’ll dig up some more missions. Run ‘em solo if you don’t want me around. I’ll understand. But if you want a partner, you’ve got one in me.” 

“I’ll think it over,” she said. 

She felt him find her eyes with his again, and a three-front war started up in her gut. Utter annoyance was a low hum, the hurt of fragile trust betrayed a sharp pang, and a weird sort of softness towards his bullshit in spite of herself. 

“And we’re gonna find your kid,” he said. 

“His name is Shaun,” she said, swallowing hard. Maybe he already knew. Maybe it didn’t matter.

He nodded. “We’ll find Shaun. That’s a promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy molerats Jeanne and Deacon are tough to fit together. I developed her so they would really challenge each other, and it turns out their relationship is challenging _me._ Also, I never want to eat a 'lurk egg omelet in my whole life. Nope. Gross.
> 
> For future ref, I know what the smut is going to look like. I'm not going to tag for all the stuff these weirdos are into, but there will be kink, light D/s, and lots of queer sex. Rating may change to E, but I'll know when I get there. I've been working on Deacon's gender stuff as well so if you're curious, check out my author's notes on the first page of the story. Otherwise, carry on. It'll show up more in the coming chapters.
> 
> Also, CW for the next chapter which mentions, deals with suicide of a minor character.


	11. All Roads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short little chapter where we see that start of main story canon divergence. More relationship development small fluff and a Deacon POV coming up next chapter, promise. And with that out of the way...
> 
> CW for Suicide discovery/suicide note. If requested I can leave a quick summary in the note at the bottom for anyone who doesn't want to read the things, but you should be able to gather things from the next chapter pretty okay.

**Fixer**

A foul whiff of something dead and rotting hit Jeanne full in the face as she opened her power armor. She gagged at the unexpected smell now she was free of the suit's rebreather, hairs standing on end. It was an objectively horrible smell, and worse, it meant that something had gone horribly awry as well. Jeanne dropped to the ground and landed in a crouch that sent pebbles skittering in a puff of dust, her geiger counter counter faltering after two days of constant screaming as she and Nick crossed the Glowing Sea. They found Virgil’s cave thanks to an utterly bizarre radiation-worshiping cult—just one more wasteland anomaly, Jeanne supposed—and the hideout was apparently deep enough underground to hold most of the rads at bay.

A chugging barrage of artillery fire sent Jeanne grabbing for her rifle and scrambling for cover in another spray of pebbles, rounds pinging and ricocheting off her power armor.

“Turret!” Nick hollered and fired down into the narrow path leading into darkness. Jeanne joined him, taking shots at the robotic lights of what she thought might be a Protectron marching towards them with that vacant air of menace. Beyond the robot, the cave lit up briefly with the light of the exploding turret. The cave rocked with echos of the fight for a moment, and then went quiet. Jeanne’s stomach heaved with a skin-crawling lurch as she caught another sick-sweet waft of rot the smell and the sense that something was very,as she inhaled through her mouth,

“You smell that? That’s godawful,” Nick said, wrinkling his nose.

“Oh, I smell it.” Jeanne dug into her pocket and pulled out a bandana, balling it up and pressing it to her nose.

She fumbled to turn her pip-boy light and the outlines of workbenches and piles of junk spang up against the silty rock walls, flames from the turret making the shadows jump and dance as smoke drifted up to mix with the choking scent of rot.

“There’s power.” Jeanne’s voice came out muffled by her handkerchief. She nodded her chin towards the shadowed shape of a generator. “See if you can find the lights?” Nick nodded as Jeanne did a full circuit of the cave, tying the bandana around her nose to at least cut some of the stench and have her hands free. She passed her pip-boy light over scattered lab equipment strewn across one workbench. Chemistry sets, petri dishes, a hot plate rigged with a jar stand, an improvised incubator forged from a toaster oven… all ingenious. Jeanne wanted to take notes. Someone had been testing or developing something here, dabbling in pathology and organic chemistry with whatever improvised tools they could find. She supposed a flight of fancy might make the lab look like it belonged to mad scientist—very Doctor Frankenstein—but the setup seemed simple enough to her. It reminded her of the temporary clinical laboratories in the hospitals she’d rotated through when not seeing live fire, during her rotation in Anchorage. Before annexation.

The lights thrummed on a moment later, and Jeanne froze when she saw a massive green body hunched in one corner of the room. For a moment no one moved. Rifle trained on the body, she advanced one cautious step at a time, rifle trained on the body. It didn’t move.

“Ugh, d _égueulasse_. Found the smell,” she called over to Nick. “A dead super mutant.”

“What? Really? ” Nick dropped the power cell he was holding and came over to look.

The cave was cold enough to slow decomposition, and by Jeanne's eye the body was perhaps four days old.

“There’s a terminal,” Nick said.

Jeanne gave the body a last look before she pulled herself away to read the logs. The most recent entry was made just three days ago, confirming her assessment of the corpse's age.

Log Entry 05 11.22.2287>>>

I AM CAUGHth betweenm tttttttthe Instituteew and theee viruuus ,,,withhh noooomore tiiiimee . I amn don fiiiiagting my boodddy. I cankdot waiet anay laonger for prrRojest Wanderer orn I will loooose myself nentirerly. I ammn done waiting fore another cOrserr to fnND MEE. LEGAQCY OF FAIlure. IIIIIIIIIiii will ened int myself, thef onlay ggogoooof d i HAve doneeeee inmyg lifee ………. Thew chipp is BroKen. Itewasnt’ engouh.

The last line was a stark contrast to the note above, because it didn't contain any typos that Jeanne could discern, and because it was in another language.

>>>Quaeque ipsa miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.

“Do you read Latin, by chance?” she asked.

“Can’t say I do, kid,” Nick said. “I’m old world, but not _that_ old world.”

She huffed a little at the joke and she scanned the line as she read it out loud a few times, stumbling over the syllables as she tried to commit them to memory, realization dawning.

The supermutant in the corner had written his own epitaph.

“A suicide note,” she muttered, putting aside the clench of her heart as she tried to puzzle out the poor typing, the ancient language, and the new clues this man—mutant—had left behind. Nick peered over her shoulder to get a look at the entry.

“Did _he_ type that?” Nick asked.

Jeanne nodded. “I believe so. Let’s see what lead up to this.” She opened the first entry on the terminal, dated months prior.

Log Entry 01 5.03.2287>>>

I wanted out, and I am here now. I wonder if it was better if I had just stayed. We ran out of time. I could not get the cure before leaving or I would put her in danger and she must never be found out. The Glowing Sea will keep Institute away from me for now, but a Courser will come eventually. It is a Courser I need for Project Wanderer to fail, but I fear this virus will not wait for things to happen as I wish them to.

 

Log Entry 02 7.12.2287>>>

I broke a test tube Typing is difficult with these clumsy finger. It was short siggthed of me to think FEV would do nothing but protect me from radiation. I tthought there wwould be time. Now what is there to protect me from myself?

 

Log Entry 03 7.31.2287>>>

The Courser came, just as we knew it would. Now I have the chip, andd can start to decode it . Project Wanderer will be disrupted. Mad e progress onthe serumm. I am ohpeful.

 

Log Entry 04 10.24.2287>>>

I bbroke thee chip. Ovver heated it duringa a scan and itsi fried. IIIireparable. I forgot that I wass running diagnosetics. Toooo ficused on making cure. My mindis not what it usew to. Be.

Jeanne pushed back from the terminal, a deep frown pinching between her brows above the bandana as she acknowledged and laid aside the panic that reared up to snap at her for being too late. Just barely too late. _Follow the threads, straighten them out and see where they lead._

She found herself wishing Deacon was there. Nick was a great detective, had helped immeasurably in her hunt for Shaun, but Deacon’s bread and butter was code and secrets. He might know what Project Wanderer was. Hell, he might speak Latin for all she knew. And he could put all of this into the context of the Railroad, and perhaps the Institute itself.

“Find anything useful?”

“The body is Virgil’s,” she confirmed. “He was working on a cure for the FEV in this lab, and also trying to get data off of a chip. He ran out of time. He mentioned something called Project Wanderer. Are you familiar with it?”

Nick looked up from sorting through Virgil’s junk and shook his head, yellow-electric eyes gathering light like a cat’s in the gloom. “Huh. So the guy turned himself mutant to survive out here. Can’t say I’ve heard of Project Wanderer, but I’ll keep an ear out.” His yellow eyes drifted back to the mass of dead super mutant in the corner and he sighed. “Poor old bastard. Couldn't have been easy, holed up in here till the end...”

“Too bad he couldn’t have held out a few more days,” Jeanne replied, trying to tamp down on the bitterness of one more dead end. Jeanne ran the words and phrases from the log over in her mind. _Chip. Project Wanderer. Courser. FEV. Virus. Cure._

Deacon mentioned Coursers during their bizarre conversation in Tichon. SRB. Cranial reboot—or memory wipe. Recall code. Everything she learned about the Institute made her realize how much more there was to uncover. And how much there was to hate.

“Lookie here, kid,” Nick said, crouching over another terminal. “Got this one unlocked. And there’s a chip and some servos here, but fried to a crisp.”

“Just like the log said,” she muttered, looking over the fried tech wired up to the console. The board looked vaguely familiar. “This looks kind of technology from Kellogg’s brain.”

“Synth component,” Nick confirmed. “They come in all shapes and sizes, I suppose. Wonder what mine looks like.”

Jeanne shot him a dark look. “Let’s hope we never find that out, yeah?”

“I’ll do my best, kid. Any more of my face falls off and we just might anyway.”

Jeanne hummed in sympathy, reached out and patted his shoulder despite the little thrill that shivered through her at the contact. She felt like a trespasser here in this cave. This wasn’t her place to start digging into her existential crisis, reaching out to the kindest soul she’d yet to meet in the wasteland. The kindest...and he wasn’t even human. What did that say about organics? It wasn’t touch aversion that made her feel wrong, not at all. It wasn’t Nick. He’d put a hand on the shoulder before, a touch on the arm to get her attention. That was fine. It was just the trouble of reaching out at all. It made things seem real. And she didn’t want any of it to be real.

And yet it felt...nice.

Nick stepped aside, her hand falling from his shoulder. Jeanne shoved her dark thoughts away with him and scanned the terminal for log entries. “Let’s see what Virgil was up to with this thing.”

The terminal contained lab notes for a project called _FEV Reversal Serum_ and a package of encrypted data simply named _CC-MR Decode_.

“This is it,” she said, fishing in her pack for her little sack of holotapes. “CC…that sounds...Institute-ish, yeah? Command code?” _Creative commons. Chocolate chip. Carbon copy…_ She snapped her fingers and a grin snapped across her face like lightning. “Courser chip.”

Nick made a thoughtful sound and she plucked a holotape from the bag, eyes locked on the screen. She was about to pop it into the terminal player when she looked down and saw the bold handwritten scrawl on the label. Jeanne shouted a curse, fumbling with the tape like it burns her fingers.

“ _Tabernac! Calise de_...shit! Oh, shit, Nate…”

_A month. A month and you haven’t listened to it yet. Oh, Nate._

She would have to listen to him call her Sophie.

Her fingers shook a little as she smoothed the label. His half-cursive scrawl always reminder her that his hand could never keep up with his brain. She could feel his sunlit enthusiasm pouring out through the letters, those two simple words.

_Hi Honey!_

“Jeanne? You okay?”

She stood in silence for a moment, holding the holotape in numb fingers, waiting for whoever Nick was talking to to respond.

“Kid? Hey, Jeanne!” Nick cast sharp shadows as he hovered behind, his hand clamping down on her shoulder, giving her a not-quite shake.

 _Oh_ …

“Oh...”

Jeanne _._ Not Sophie from Boston any longer, not Saint from CAAB. And now she was Fixer, too. It would be easy to just be Fixer. She’d almost lost herself last time, when she was Saint, sniping American MPs and stripping strike sites of anti-anx activity, hauling away bodies and scouring away forensic evidence. Her medical training had such strange advantages…

She could just be Fixer. That would be nice. But Fixer wasn’t a mom. Being just Fixer wouldn’t help her find Shaun.

“You were somewhere else for a second there,” Nick said. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Jeanne—no, _fuck it_ —Fixer managed to grunt, straightening up a bit, glad her expression was mostly obscured by the bandana. Her voice, when she managed to find it, cracked a little, then came easier. “Fine. Just nearly deleted an important bit of history. Crisis averted.”

“I guess we can’t all have databanks like these.” Nick tapped his forehead, and then frowned. “Actually i think part of my memory bank is in my back, but… you get the idea.”

Fixer managed a half hearted laugh shoved the tape back into the bag and pulled out another, the Railroad holo. That, she could do without.

Deacon’s voice played as clearly in her head as it did that day she’d almost stabbed him in Goodneighbor.

_So this is us... finding you..._

She popped the tape in and set up a data overwrite.

“Let’s get this intel and get the hell out of here,” she said, watching the data tick from the terminal over to the holotape. "Grab Virgil's diary entries if you've got an extra holo."

Nick nodded, and Fixer went back to watching the soothing tick-tock of the data transfer bounce back and forth across the screen. 

 _Nate_. How could she have forgotten about the tape? How could she do such discredit to Nate that she hadn’t listened to it yet? But he’d understand, really. He always did. She almost hated him for it.

_You’ll never be ready._

“Agreed,” Nick said, giving the room one last detective’s inspection for anything they may have missed. “Poor Virgil isn’t up for providing much hospitality these days.”

Fixer glanced over to Virgil’s final resting place. She felt a brief pang of regret for not being able to talk to him, for being just a few days too late, and a bitter understanding for why he would take his own life, how desperate he must have been at the end, his fingers so clumsy that he couldn’t type or handle a test-tube without it shattering. But the she remembered where he had come from and the pangs died to a dull whisper as questions bubbled up. What horrors had he invented in the Institute? Was it his idea to create a sentient race of people and enslave them? Was it his idea to replace humans with synths to run experiments? What involvement did he have with FEV? And even if none of those things were his idea, to be complicit to an act of horror was the same as being guilty of it. He made his choices.

A conscience grown too late. The only regret she had for him was that he’d run out of time to seek some sort of redemption.

She breathed hard through her nose, trying not to gag on the rot.

“Let’s get out of here,” Fixer said. “He stinks.” She took another dose of Rad-X and headed back up the tunnel to her power armor. She needed to repair the half smashed hydraulic suspension on the left keen, but the smell of rot and the weight of the two holotapes in her bag drove her onward. The knee would hold until she made it back to the Children of Atom stronghold. They’d let her eat and rest there on the way in, and she doubted they would begrudge her stopping for a few repairs. The rad worshipers might creep her the hell out, but ah— _Faute de grives, on mange des merles_ , as her father use to say when she complained about what was for dinner or all the girly hand-me-downs from Eloise. [2]

Odd that she hadn’t really thought about her family since the getting out of the Vault.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nick said. “Just say the word if you need a rest, though. I forget people like you get tired.”

“People like me?”

“You know.” Nick shrugged, a little jerk of his shoulders and a sly little grin. “Meatbags.”

“Thanks Nick. I'll be sure to reconsider putting my power armor between you and one of those giant scorpions, since I'm apparently a fragile bag of meat.”

Nick guffawed. "They're called radscorps, kid."

Fixer smirked as she pulled herself up into the tin can. It closed around her with a beep, the confines screaming safety teetering on the edge of the dangers that lay just outside. Fixer wasn’t looking forward to the constant click of the geiger counter or the yellow rain, but there was a promise of answers not much further along the road. The metaphorical road. There were definitely no roads in the Glowing Sea.

She needed to talk to Deacon.

She needed to see how much she could trust him with the _CC-MR Decode_ files _,_ and if the Railroad would let her work on the project and use the information to find Shaun. The last thing she needed was to get shut out in the name of “compartmentalization.” Then she’d just have to steal the data back, and lord knew that would end up with her at the wrong end of a burn notice, as if one of those in a lifetime wasn’t enough.

Resistance...resistance was brutal, and while Jeanne needed the Railroad, she wanted to make sure _they_ needed her. Deacon could help with that. Already had. She felt his sincerity when he’d said he was in her corner, that he’d help her find Shaun. For someone who lied a lot he was amazingly candid. Probably another stick to keep people off balance, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. After those first few lies...well, even the thinnest of transparency between uneasy partners could go a long way. Deacon would continue to help imbed herself a little more securely into the Railroad’s inner circle. She was already close. She just needed what was on that chip.

"Uh...you think we should say something? Give the old guy some words to rest on?"

Jeanne huffed as the rebreather kicked in, eyes closing as the stench receded. Then she smiled though the gentle words sounded odd coming through the power armor comm. "' _What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question._ '” 

"Huh. That's an interesting...uh, quote?" Nick looked up at her, yellow eyes trying to puzzle her out through all those layers of metal.  
  
"Margaret Atwood," she said, and there was a smile in her voice. "Old world author. Reviled in the United States. Look, Virgil has given me a road, yes? He can rest now. _On y va_. Let's go."

~~~

[1] English translation: “ _So many terrible things I saw, and in so many of them I played a great part._ ” Virgil, The Aeneid.

[2] English translation: Literally: _"For lack of thrushes, one eats blackbirds.”_ English: “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Virgil. I put a lot of thought into the whys and what the fucks of his death, but I'm still sorry. :-/
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing this story. Kudos and comments are fuel that keeps me going. Besides, your comments may very well influence the story…. Ilu.


	12. Infra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm updating the rating to explicit. I've been writing future smut and oh lordy. I'll be redoing the tags to take into account future happenings as well (Imprisonment, test subjects)
> 
> Chapter title inspired by Max Richter's album, [Infra.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl48Bl6kQRQ&t=906s)

**infra**

/ˈinfrə/ - _adverb_

(in a written document) below; further on.

"see note, infra"

  

Deacon

Goodneighbor took the flotsam and jetsam of the Commonwealth, collecting like ditchwater collected in a ditch, stagnating in relative safety only to be flushed away with each successive deluge of Commonwealth crisis. The drifters, the chem heads, the down on their luck mercs, they all passed through and out again, and then trickled back. There was even room for tired old spies.

Deacon inched across a rickety bridge and hauled himself up a ladder like a careful shade slinking through clinging shadow—a very nervous, breathless, slightly dizzy shade. Ten stories up and the ground yawned at him like a lazy beast, making his heart race, vertigo taking hold as he reached the trapdoor on the roof. The heights and the back entrance where necessary. It was vital that no one see him come and go from the old apartment complex next to the Rexford. The building was only half full of tenants and squatters—no one stayed in Goodneighbor long enough to settle into a living space, and no one lived that high up. The stairs weren't worth the trip when the chems and the Third Rail were ground floor or below.

Deacon entered the combination to the trap door and took a moment to change the numbers to a new set as he did each time he took a rare visit to this little place. The dead-empty hall stretched long and gloomy, somehow yawning like the ground, feeling inevitable.

Deacon ignored the little thrill of dread he always felt coming here and fished a key out of one of his hidden bags, one he kept flush to his hip at all times. He stopped at one innocuous brown door and slipped the key into the lock. The deadbolt tumbled open and he slipped inside, locking the door behind him. From the inside, steel bands of bolted steel and heavy hinges made the door much more imposing. From outside, it was no different than any other entry.

He took off his sunglasses and let his eyes adjust to the near dark room, scanned to make sure it was intact and untouched. Vague, bulky shapes stood out under threadbare canvas and Deacon pulled the sheets off one by one, folding them and dropping them in a corner. A bed, bookshelves, a chair. Crates lined the walls, covered in a thin film of dust.

He twitched open the curtain covering the window at the far side of the room, allowing a thin beam of sunlight knife across the room. Ten stories up, with sheer brick walls on one side, and protected by Hancock and his ilk on the other, Deacon finally exhaled.

_Safehouse._

Springs sagged under his weight as he sank onto the bed and put his sunglasses on the nearby bookshelf. Deacon undressed slowly, dropping his coat and scarf, his fingerless gloves, pulling of his wig, his shirt, kicking off his boots and then wriggling out of his jeans.

It was the first time in months he dared to drop his pants for anything more than a quick bathroom break or a costume change. Even the last time Deacon had his pants down for longer than a minute they stayed around his ankles while a gruff caravanner ate him him out in an old warehouse near the trader camp. They exchanged some sexual favors and a bit of rough play, and in the short lived afterglow Deacon coaxed the guard into informing on Trashcan Carla. As he suspected, she had been spying on the Institute for over a year. Traders made good spies, but knowing who they were made for even better counterintelligence. He was now working to place a heavy in her caravan.

It had been a good night.

Deacon lay back with hands behind his head, shivering in the cool, unused air as he stared up at the patchwork celing of timber and steel, evidence of his years’ long effort to keep the room in repair. This was his place, the room and protection for it bought and paid for by ‘Lex’. Hancock was good as his word, never asked questions and the don’t ask don’t tell policy worked fine for Deacon.

The the accumulated detritus from years of living and searching for evidence of the old world lay all around the room; pre-war gizmos with varying degrees of usefulness: a broken camera, the sewing machine Deacon had modified to be pedal-powered, to an inkless typewriter. He turned his head to look at the bookshelf, carefully packed with ancient, fragile volumes.

He reached over to the bookshelf—bookshelves were always meant to be in reach of a bed—and slipped a thin purple volume from its place with his other 20th Century novels. _The Member of the Wedding_. Poor Frankie Adams, caught between boy and girl, between child and adult, between wanting to leave and needing to stay.

Deacon leafed through the book, scanning the pages without reading too deeply. Lines stood out and fell away until one stopped him.

“ _The world is certainty a sudden place._ ” [1]

He closed the book and let it rest on his chest, between symmetrical scars he couldn’t bear to part with amid the multitude of things he’d already erased.

 _A sudden place_. It must be how Fixer felt about emerging into the wasteland, everything changed except for human nature. An _uncomfortable_ place. A harsh and unforgiving place. It must be lonely. And it amazed him how she navigated it with such aplomb.

Not that he really knew how she felt. Not after weeks of watching her. Not after talking to her, or the past, somewhat disastrous 48 hours working with her. He still couldn’t figure her out.

He ran all the plays through his mind. She definitely had military training. She was too efficient, too good at moving fast and light (despite that unfortunate scavver habit), switching weapons like other people switched...something _._ Shoes. She had more weapons than most people had shoes, though. Except Deacon. He had lots of shoes.

She didn’t like his lying. He figured even before he met her that his relationship with the truth would be a problem, but now he felt he could make that peculiar quirk of his somehow endearing. Most people dismissed his lying as a gimmick instead of an unfortunate kink in his personality.

He should have followed her instead of coming here. He’d managed to ignore the screaming in his gut for the past 24 hours since he watched her cross the bridge, heading south. That obsessive voice demanded that he not lose his mark. His gut screamed at him: _Glowing Sea. Imminent death. Follow her. Follow her!_

But she wasn’t a mark any more. He kept trying to reason it out instead, feeding scraps of evidence to the demands of his instinct like he was trying to gain the trust of a feral dog.

It went like this: Fixer liked her privacy, and had very specific ethics. He needed Fixer to trust him. She wouldn’t trust him unless he respected her privacy and played along with her 21st century ethics.

It seemed that she at least understood _why_ he’d been trailing her “since Diamond city”—he’d omit that particular confession to keep her happy. At this point she knew it was nothing personal, anyway. He wasn’t working for the Institute. He was a professional. She got it. She didn’t like it, but...

_Ethics. Ethics are a thing._

Even if she was going to the Glowing Sea. Even if it was going to kill her.

He could always have his tourists keep an eye on the deadlands. It was ethical if he wasn’t spying directly, right?

_Wrong._

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He’d been going about this all wrong.

And still, he needed to _do_ something. He should walk around Commonwealth, talk to his seeds, do some relationship building with his tourists, gather intel. He could go to HQ and sit on his ass and run numbers with PAM, though getting the side eye from other agents for being such a giant fucking weirdo was not appealing. Besides, PAM wasn’t going to tell him anything he didn’t already know: The Minutemen were growing. The Brotherhood of Steel was a threat. And he really didn’t want to know the odds of someone surviving their first time in the Glowing Sea.

He huffed and pushed himself upright, slipping the book back in the gap on the shelf. He found his threadbare bathrobe and padded barefoot over to the stack of storage crates, and flipped open a lid.

More scraps for rabid dogs.

He could help even if he wouldn’t follow. Twenty years of walking the earth provided more resources than Decon knew what to do with. He was a giving sort, too. Didn’t need anything even though he had too much.

As for surviving the Glowing Sea and coming back to the Railroad after it was all over? That was all on Fixer.

What was one of those funny swears she used?

_Tabernak._

~~~

Deacon spent the rest of the week doing exactly what he should be doing: wandering around north and west of Bunker Hill collecting gossip, doing trust building exercises with his tourists, and gathered intel. A very normal week by all accounts, with very normal thoughts about very normal Railroad things.

He investigated Augusta and found a lead to an old abandoned hospital that he had no business in going into alone. Raider activity, and a lot of it. He’d pass the intel on to Dez who would probably give it to Glory, who would probably take out an entire raider encampment solo and bring back bad news. Another casualty of the Switchboard. Deacon wondered when they would be done tallying their losses.

He took his sweet-ass time heading back east, as if delaying the inevitable would make it any less...inevitable. Still he has to arrive eventually, and the anxiety he had been ignoring all week starts to crawl up his spine as he started to change.

All the clothes in his hidden stash outside of the narrow, swampy corridor to the Church were untouched, and Deacon did a quick change into his HQ persona. The switch was a ritual at this point, calming and centering as an irradiated stroll down the beach at sunset. He washed his face and neck, checked that his t-shirt was on the right way ‘round and made sure his dick was firmly (though softly packed) in place and not migrating as it sometimes liked to do. He cleaned his nails with a penknife and wished he had a mirror. Alas. There was nothing more to do, no more procrastinating.

She wouldn't be there. She would show up in a week, letting him cool his heels in HQ long enough for him to start thinking she she abandoned the Railroad in favor of the Minutemen. She could tell the Railroad was on its last legs and she really couldn’t rely on them. On him. She was dead. She was a deathclaw's dinner. She got poisoned by a radscorp. She fell in a pit of bubbling rad-goo and dissolved into a glowing one, doomed to roam the wasteland spewing green stuff at unsuspecting victims for the rest of time.

_Deep breath._

_You’re Deacon. Totally chill, completely casual HQ Deacon. Deacon who’s been showing up at HQ an awful lot more than he had been in the past few...years._

He shoved the thought aside and made the long, damp walk to back entrance, his feet finding the stepping stones that kept his sneakers dry without thinking. Too soon, he pushed to door open and slunk up the hallway, heart hammering in his chest.

He heard her voice before he even turned the corner. He might not be able to make out her words, but he’d know that voice anywhere. It drifted down the brick hallway, sounding like actual music to his ears. Mildly accented, slightly hoarse music. Sometimes he wanted to imitate her her, see if he could get those elongated ‘r’s and swallowed ‘h’s just right.

He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and a little laugh bubbled from his chest.

She was _alive._ And _back._ Here. At HQ. Without an ounce of intervention on his part. He was going to have to stop underestimating her.

Deacon rubbed his cheeks with both hands to find himself grinning, his face hot. He dragged his fingers down his cheeks to whipe the stupid grin he found into a customary Deacon-at-HQ smirk. Thus prepared, he shoved his hands into the pockets and turned the corner.

"—hydraulic in one of the knees knee acted up at one point,” he heard Fixer say. She sat with Glory at one of the stone tombs the agents liked to use as tables, a few Nuka Colas placed haphazardly on the rounded top.

“I had hoped it would hold until we reached the cult...encampment,” Fixer continued, “but of course we wandered into a nest of those giant radscorpions—” She pronounced the word carefully.

“Oof.” Glory hissed in sympathy. “Radscorps are no joke.”

Fixer nodded. “The knee wouldn’t budge after the fight. I’ll tell you this, trying to reconnect power couplings in a leaking hydraulic joint when all you can see is yellow mist is not the most pleasant thing I’ve done recently.”

 _Oh my god, she’s bragging. And Glory’s eating it up._ Deacon couldn’t bear to interrupt them yet.

Glory huffed. “Yeah? If that’s what you’d call unpleasant I’d love to see what you call a bad time. How’d you get out of it?”

He saw Fixer’s shoulders raise in a shrug. “I took a lot of rads getting it fixed with Nick, but I’d have been dead without him.”

“So you’re really buddies with Valentine?” Glory took a sip from her bottle and then balanced it back on the top of the tomb. Deacon could almost hear the gears turning in Glory’s head. If Fixer was buddies with Valentine, she wasn’t squeamish about synths, which meant she probably deserved a tiny bit of Glory’s respect.

“Yeah. He’s been a lifesaver for me out here—”

Deacon took a few steps further from the hall and Glory’s eyes snapped to him, sharp and crinkled at the corners in an expression Deacon knew for sly amusement. Glory always wore that face when she was judging him. And if Deacon knew anything about Glory, she was usually judging him.

Glory jerked her chin in Deacon’s direction. Fixer rolled her head around to catch sight of him, the move languid. Her shoulders shrugged in a huff of surprised laughter and she offered him a tiny, crooked smile that made Deacon raised his eyebrows.

“Two heavies in HQ at one time?” he drawled, making other heads turn all over HQ. “I’ll have to get my autograph book.”

“I’ll sign whatever you want, sweetheart,” Glory said, and Deacon chuckled. So she was in one of _those_ moods.

He sauntered over, shuffling his feet as he tried to get a read on Fixer. She didn’t look angry at the sight of him. Hell, that smile made him think she was glad, maybe a little relieved to see him. Her posture was closed and reserved as ever, but she wasn’t _scowling._ Marked improvement.

Deacon propped himself against the pillar by her chair and gave her face a quick search. Beyond the little crooked smile she looked exhausted, and Deacon saw the tell-tale signs of radiation poisoning. Her lips were pale and chapped, pinched at the corners, skin patchy and flushed, deep circles like bruises under her eyes. Still, her eyes were deep as ever, drinking in everything around her, including him.

The rogue grin stole back to his face before he could stop it. She stared steadily at him as if she was trying to beam information directly into his brain.

_What are you tryin’ to tell me, Fix?_

"Fixer's hardcore," Glory said, not looking at Deacon, but at Fixer. "Can I tell him?"

"Go ahead," Fixer said, breaking off her stare. "Though I'd be shocked if he didn't already know."

"Know what?” Deacon shifted against the pillar, tilting his head to the side like he was already bored. “That you’ve got thrill issues? Cat's outta the bag."

"She went to the Glowing Sea. She won't tell me why, something about—"

" _Compartmentalization_ ," he and Fixer said at the same time. She scowled and he grinned.

"Jinx. You owe me a Nuka,” he said. Fixer snorted in surprise and opened her mouth to retort but Deacon clicked his tongue.

“Looks like you've already got the Nuka covered, though. Thanks." He snagged the soda that sat near Glory's hand. Glory made an indignant noise as he took a sip, batting at him with a stronger swing that was strictly necessary. He dodged the blow with a little sidestep and mocked a satisfied sigh even though the sugar made him want to pull a face. Too sweet.

“ _Quétaine_ ,” Fixer said, picked at the flaking label on her own bottle of soda. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said. “What to take a walk?”

She nodded as she stood and waved to Glory. “See you around, Minigun.”

Glory snickered, kicking one ankle over the other as she leaned back and pulled the cola from Deacon’s loose fingers. “Hope all that ‘compartmentalization’ works out for ya.”

Deacon waved her off from over his back as he followed Fixer through HQ, heading towards the front door. They managed to dodge Tom’s attempt to rant at them about alien sightings and Institute terraforming, thought Deacon _would_ have to stop by later to have his customary riff with their resident mad mechanic.

Fixer took the lead through the maze of catacombs below the church and Deacon clamped his mouth shut instead of filling the air with useless chatter. Let her talk first.

She did after a few moments. “I found something in the Glowing Sea that the Railroad is going to want to know about.”

He felt a _‘but’_ coming. He was also unable to keep his mouth shut. “Besides the irradiated cesspools and the deathclaws?” She glanced over her shoulder with a smirk, still navigating the tumbledown maze of stones and skeletons as they made their way to the stairs. “And a weird cult that worships radiation.”

“And the giant scorpions,” he added.

“Radscorps, I _know_. Also the pretty, glowing rain that makes your hair fall out,” she said.

“They always recommend you pack a hat, but then again, the Glowing Sea was never a very popular vacation destination for some reason. I was thinking of booking with the Cult of Atom Resort and Hotel Casino but I hear the odds on survival are pretty slim.”

That made her snort as she climbed the stairs into the less claustrophobic air of the open church, warm evening light streaming through high, broken windows. She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest.

“So, all joking about near death experiences aside, what’s on your mind? Care to clue me in on what this ultra secret, total vital to the Railroad intel is, or do I have to steal it off you?”

“That depends.” A serious expression tightened the corners of her mouth and a glint that meant she was ready to take on a Deathclaw shone in her eyes. “How likely is it that Desdemona will take me off whatever project comes from the intel?”

Deacon shrugged. “Easy question, not quite so easy answer. Getting Dez to agree to anything is always a gamble, but her word is as good as gold once she signs on. You can probably bargain with her, but withholding intel isn’t exactly a way to stay in her good books.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you. You haven’t told anyone I’m pre-war. You’re intel, but you keep it to yourself unless it’s vital.”

Deacon nodded and not for the first time he wondered what sort of military training she had.

“Okay. If you think Dez can be pushed into agreeing to give me this, I’ll buy it. I’ll give you some details if you give me an angle.”

“Hey, I’ll take what I can get,” Deacon said. That earned him a fleeting, flat eyed smirk. “And I’ve got your angle. It’s my usual one. I’ll just annoy Dez ‘till she agrees because she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Good. Then here it is. I went to find an Institute scientist who went rogue. I was put on his trail after dealing with Kellogg. Which you probably already knew.”

“I know less than you think,” he said. _And way less than I’d like._

“Doubtful, but irrelevant,” she said, one eyebrow twitching as she waved off his words like a swarm tiny bloatflies. “When I got to the the scientist, I found a super mutant instead. A dead super mutant.”

Deacon blinked, trying to follow. “Okay? So your scientist killed the big green green guy and scuttled off to some science in a super mutant free environment?”

“You would think, but no. The scientist _was_ the super mutant. He killed himself. Suicide. Recent.” Deacon’s eyebrows raised above his sunglasses as she continued. “He was trying to get back into the Institute for some reason that wasn’t clear, but he ran out of time. In his logs he had subjective as well as objective signs of gradual degeneration of cognitive and motor functions.” Deacon’s eyebrows rose higher as she rattled off what sounded like the sort of medical jargon Carrington was always throwing around, but filed it away as she barreled on. Deacon wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her talk so much in one go and he wasn’t about to interrupt.

“In the logs he indicated that _‘they’_ —whoever they are—were trying to disrupt something called ‘Project Wanderer,’” she continued. “Ever heard of it?”

Whispers. A few mentions in the past few years—he’d have to check his notes to say how many, but he thought it was perhaps three. One mention by a Courser he’d been eavesdropping on. No context. His body started to tingle, warming to the word. Project Wanderer.

‘ _No,’_ sat on the tip of his tongue. A reflexive lie. Fixer watched him, brown eyes tight, measuring him, but behind her hardass expression he saw a hint of hope, and of worry.

“Yeah,” he said. “Only whispers from Institute agents. No idea what it is, but if I were to assume things, which I don’t, I’d call it some sort of Institute project.”

Fixer nodded. “That’s...what I’ve assumed as well. Virgil was on our side, I think. He wanted to end Project Wanderer.” She fished a bundle of cloth out of her shoulder bag and unfolded a the careful wrappings to reveal a singed circuit board. “Do you know what it is?”

“Uh...looks like a broken computer gizmo,” he said, trying not to wince as his voice broke a little when his heart slammed in into his ribs and started knocking. _Synth component._ There was only one way to get a bit of scrap like that, and that was by digging around in a dead synth’s brain. Deacon tried not to think how many times he’d come across a body with it’s brain open, people huddled around, pointing accusing fingers at each other, regardless of whether there was metal or meat inside. He definitely didn’t think about how the Claws had Barbara’s body intact and he didn’t have the guts to…

Fixer was talking. Deacon blinked and honed in on her lips, the flash of her teeth, using the cadence of her voice to bring him back.

“—a courser chip,” she was saying. Shit, what had he missed in his trip down flashback lane? “Virgil was trying to decode it, and failed. This is where I need the Railroad’s help. I need another chip. _We_ need another chip. And I have no idea how to find a courser.”

Deacon stared at the burnt chip for a moment, his heart still knocking against his ribs like it was trying to make a break for it. He tried to hide his uneasy breath by rubbing a hand on the back of his neck and bullshit flashbacks aside, his brain started to whir. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. You want to kill a courser and get the chip from their brain?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You know, Coursers? The notorious iron fists of Institute's evil will? The ones that you see coming and you...uh...run? Or you die.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she said again.

“And you think that a chip will tell us something about the Institute? Enough to make yet another near-death, batshit crazy mission worht it?”

“ _Crisse de osit…_ yes _.”_ Deacon thought she barely restrained herself from throwing up her hands.

“Sooo, kill the courser, get the chip, find out the story. Live happily ever after. That’s your plan?” “That’s about what I’m thinking. I need someone to decode the chip.”

“Tom,” Deacon said. “He’s the mad genius for the job.”

“Dez _can’t_ take this away from me, understand?” Her eyes got that flinty look again and Deacon resisted the urge to put his hand on her shoulder when he nodded, show her some way he understood.

“‘Coruse. You can count on me for that. This feels huge.”

“It does. It is, I think.”

Fixer needn’t have worried. Dez hemmed and hawed a bit when Fixer said she had intel but needed to be the one on the job. Fixer waited with her hands on her hips, and Dez shot a glance at Deacon as she hesitated.

_Is she the one we need?_

Deacon nodded and Fixer smiled and Dez agreed—Fixer could go courser killing to hear heart’s content, and whatever they found out, wherever it might lead, it was Fixer’s project. Fixer left and came back an hour later with a holotape—smart woman, leaving hard evidence outside the bargaining ring—and Tom and Dez immediately got to work. Fixer wrote up a report in the bullroom where Deacon had installed himself, sorting through old clothes and gear.

Amid all this, Deacon’s fleeting moment of triumph quickly died as a new realization sunk in… Deacon was gonna have to go with her. He could ditch the partnership if he was really too chicken to do it, but damn. No. No way would he let her do it alone. He’d killed a courser or two in his day, but it had always been on accident, and he’d never once thought about digging around in the dead synth’s head to get intel. He preferred verbal and observational technique to gory ones.

 _Ugh_.

“So,” she said, coming over to his side of the room after she finished her report. “Any idea how to find a courser?”

“Oh? You want me in on this too, huh? Decided I’m not such a bad partner after Tichon, after all?”

“I didn’t think you were done following me around the Commonwealth,” she said, dropping down in a chair next to him. He shifted a box of gear he’d been sorting through over with one foot, giving her room to stretch out her feet.

“I’m happy partnering up. We can do a lot of good together.” She raised a brow and he shrugged. “I was just hoping to keep a bit of distance from people literally programmed to kill. But eh, you’ve fought a—” _Deathclaw. In Lexington. Your first night. You shouldn't know that, D._ “A hell of a lot of things that might be just about as bad.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” she said, watching his hands as he sorted through bits of armor and some old clothes he’d once used in his rotating wardrobe of disguises.

“And I’ll be right behind you. Emphasis on behind. As for finding a courser...That’s going to take some thinking. A trap would work, but I don’t want to put any synths at risk. We have eyes on Institute junk patrols. Sometimes coursers ride along for extra security, but that’s dicey. Could take months. We’ll have to think on it. And prepare. Like..frags and serious armor prepare.”

_Ah, the perfect segue._

“On the subject of armor, I have something for you.”

Fixer leaned back, raking her hair back with one hand. “Will you please stop giving me things? It’s making me feel inadequate.”

“Aw, Fix,” he said. “I’m trying to offload some of my own supplies, anyway. You know, spread the wealth around.” He leaned in a little and lowered his voice. “Besides, you’ve missed what… 210 birthdays? I’m just helping you make up for it. And they’re gifts of the useful, not dying kind.”

“Another token of faith?”

“Naw,” he said. “No more tokens. You’ve earned the Railroad’s trust at this point.”

She huffed, smile crooked. “Fine. I’m due a few birthday presents, and the stupid day is coming up. What have you got?”

He dug around towards the bottom of the box where he’d buried his surprise, an old NCR duster and breastplate, and a terrifyingly beautiful helmet he’d had in his safehouse storage for more years than he cared to count.

“Ah, here it is.” He held up the coat and the breastplate, waving them a little. “Eh? Pretty good. Throw a tough lining in there and you’re good to go. Pretty stylish, too.”

“I don’t care much about style,” she said, reaching out to touch the leather. Deacon resisted the urge to add in a quippy ‘ _I know,’_ and risk getting stabbed—“But this looks solid. Some kind of military coat? That helmet is... _qul’est le mot_ ….e _st trop_ ,” she muttered. “Too much. Intense.” Then she smiled. “I like it.”

“Yep. Straight from the Mojave.” He dropped the coat into her lap and plunked the helmet at her feet. “I was a soldier out there, once. I’ll tell you about it some time.”

“The Mojave? The desert? That’s where Kellogg was from.” Her hands tightened on the coat, eyes brighter than he’d seen them before.

“Oh,” he said, feeling suddenly thick. Of course. The whole of the Railroad knew Kellogg was from out west. Deacon’s own trip out that way had found evidence of his rampages. Deacon of all people knew how objects could trigger memories, unpleasant states. “I should have thought—”

“No,” she said. “This is NCR...New California Republic?” Fixer eyes sank closed for a moment and she sighed, probably processing this revelation but a moment later she sat up, all business. “It’s a good coat. It’s too large, though.”

Deacon shrugged, the thickness in his chest from his slip up easing into relief. “I’m a wizard with a needle and thread. Comes complimentary with all the disguises.”

“It’s really...it’s really nice.” An odd, conflicted expression flitted over her face and it looked like she was about to say something. “Thank you,” she said at last.

“It’s nothing, really. NCR Ranger has been sitting in my backlog of possible disguises for ages but it never suited me. Someone should have it. Let me take your measurements.”

“I can give them to you. I had to get everything tailored...before. Even out here nothing fits me right.” She tugged at the sleeve of her jumpsuit like it annoyed her. “Amazing how being short and fat is still inconvenient after 200 of cultural...progress.”

Deacon snorted. “‘Progress,’ is not exactly the word I’d use. But hey! I’ve got the fashion sense and the tailoring skills. You’ve got the guns, grenades, and some thrill issues. We can kick ass and look good doing it. No problem.”

Her face softened more and she smiled down at her hands. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds good.”

Deacon pulled a notebook and a stub of pencil from a pocket and passed it to her. She scribbled in a fast, cramped hand, pausing to think here and there.

“Sooo…You're a Capricorn?”

She looked up from her scribbing to stare at him. “People still use astrology? _Crisse_ , I was really hoping that had died out by now.”

“Nah, not so much,” Deacon said. “I am a student of both the ancient and the arcane. Took a bachelor’s in it.”

“And a Master’s in bullshit, yeah?” she added as she tossed the notebook back to him.

He caught it and glanced down at the numbers, all in centimeters. He grinned when he caught sight of her height measurement: 157cm.

“Goodness, you’re short.” She made a sound that might have been a growl but he kept running his mouth to delay her laying into him. “But really, the Capricorn thing explains a lot. Determined, practical, workaholic, stabby, incredibly grumpy…”

“I’m going to burn whatever book you got that bullshit fro—”

Whatever she was going to say got cut off by a whoop from the other room, so loud it echoed off the bricks. Fixer jumped, her head snapping around to stare at the door. She got up slowly and heeled towards the door, hand straying to her sidearm—Deliverer. Jumpy thing. Deacon could relate, he realized as he followed.

“I got it! _OH YEAH_ , you Insitute bastards couldn’t hide from me forever!” Deacon and Fixer exchanged a look and went to peer around the corner. Tom was over in his workshop, hopping a little from foot to foot with his eyes glued to a terminal while the entirety of HQ stared at him.

“Fixer!” He looked up and spotted her from across the room. “Yo! Fixer, get over here. That little holotape of yours was a goldmine. I got a way to find you a courser. It’s radios, man! It’s all about the radios.”

Fixer glanced at Deacon and he shrugged. “Tom’s never steered me wrong before,” he said, trying to swallow a shit eating grin.

“Mmmhmm,” she said. “Not once, I’m sure.”

“Radios. At the C.I.T.! _Ahh_ , why didn’t I think of it before? Low-band signals, just…oh you slick bastards...” Tom practically danced at his terminal, little bits and bobs from his tinkering flying to the floor as he bumped a table.

“Never,” Deacon said. Fixer shook her head and jogged to Tom’s little corner of the room

Now that he thought about it, it was really the truth. The trick to Tom was knowing when his theories were grounded in some sort of shared reality, and to keep away from the ones that would kill you.

~~~

[1] _The Member of the Wedding,_ Carson McCullers. (1946)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Behold! I have written my own version of Deacon!  
> Also me: You ruined a perfectly good character. Look at him. He's got anxiety.
> 
> Edit: Jebus y'all are so sweet. I was just being a meme shitlord commenting on how much anxiety I give Deacon. I'll admit writing Deacon makes ME anxious too so thank you so much for being so enthusiastically reassuring. Poor baby I love him so much.
> 
> Anyway, things got pretty real for a second there... *fans self* Deacon, pal, it’s gonna be fine. Probably.


	13. Heal Thyself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m doing the dumb coat fluff because I got that NCR coat mod called “Plunket’s Duster” (it’s rly good check it out) and wanted an in-universe reason for my Sole to have it. Naturally sneaky been-everywhere Deacon gave it to her :3
> 
> CW for needles and bloody medical procedures

_La maladie est le plus écouté des médecins: à la bonté, au savoir on ne fait que promettre; on obéit à la souffrance._

-Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promises only; pain we obey.

_In Search of Lost Time, Vol. IV: Cities of the Plain, Marcel Proust (1921-1922)_

**Fixer**

“Hey-ya Fix,” Deacon called down the tunnel towards her. “Check-in went good. Tom finished putting the lining in your coat. See how this fits.”

Jeanne looked up from sorting through gear. Deacon seemed relaxed and clean in his usual HQ clothes after a week of them sleeping rough in the field. His shift in demeanor from out in the Commonwealth was slight but noticeable. Less focused, more cavalier. Jeanne wondered how much of HQ Deacon was an act, and how much was him—if he was actually anyone—but he tossed her a bundle of brown leather and she caught it, her thoughts wandering off as she let the butter-soft leather unfold through her fingers. She held up the coat and looked it over. The duster was smaller now, and it might just fit her. She half-smiled and tossed the coat over a storage crate where she kept heavy ordnance away from HQ. Never a good idea to store explosives near a bunch of people that you wanted to keep alive.

Jeanne pulled off the heavy leather coat she’d been wearing over her jumpsuit when she wasn’t wearing that awful raider armor. The old coat was too big in the shoulders and wouldn’t zip comfortably over her hips but bagged out over her chest. Not the most flattering thing she’d worn, but there was worse out there for her chubby, pear shape. She kept the sleeves rolled up so they wouldn’t cover her hands. Generally everything in the wasteland was a pain in the ass, but fitting clothes was one of those things that had plagued her even before the war.

The tan coat slipped around her and settled like someone put comforting hands on her shoulders. It fit neatly over her hips—another point of contention she had with most clothes. A belt hung to her knees, to be buckled behind her back or around her waist.

“Damn, Deacon,” she said, tugging at the cuffed and buttoned sleeves that actually ended at her wrists. “You weren't kidding about your tailoring skills.” She looked herself over a bit more and glanced towards the helmet resting on a nearby crate. “I feel a little scary.”

“Oh, absolutely intimidating,” Deacon confirmed. He had a way of making the things he said sound like absolute lies and completely sincere at the same time...It made hr want to throttle him. Instead she rolled her eyes as he shrugged out of his t-shirt and rifled through a crate of clothes, pulling out his favored rust-colored plaid shirt. Deacon had more changes of clothes than she’d even had before the war. It was almost comforting in a way that someone still cared about...well, _fashion_ was the only word she could think of. Even if it was for vaguely nefarious purposes.

Jeanne looked around the storage room and decided that while Deacon was a department store, she was becoming an armory. Once she discovered his secret stash of clothes and handguns in the power supply room she staged a hostile takeover and started filling it with her own ordnance: a gauss rifle, a minigun, lots and lots of frag mines.

Disguises and explosives. They were an odd couple to say the least.

“There’s a dead drop for us.”

Jeanne blinked at Deacon, jerked from her wandering thoughts.

“I’m ready to go,” she said. Sure, she’d just cleared Sunshine Tidings of a hoard of feral ghouls and helped them repair half a dozen roofs, then walked halfway across Boston with Deacon and MacCreedy, before ditching the latter in Goodneighbor and heading back to HQ with the former. She’d had maybe eight hours of sleep in the past three days, but what was a little lost sleep between missions? Anything to kill time while she waited on news of Courser activity. _Somewhere._ Potentially in the ruins of the C.I.T. Deacon said his people were keeping an eye—a _radio_ , so technically it would be an ear—out for anything in the area.

“No word on the Courser?” Jeanne stuffed a few more makeshift bandages in her med bag and zipped it up.

“Nothing yet,” Deacon said, buttoning his shirt and tugging his ridiculous wig in place. It almost didn’t seem weird at this point. It made him look younger—years younger—when he wore it, but from what Jeanne had seen of the hair on his chest, it was tinged with silver. Not for the first time she wondered how old he really was.

“Maybe the dead drop will have some good news, yeah?” she said.

“That’s the spirit, boss.” Deacon adjusted his sunglasses and she was pretty sure he winked. “Keep it positive. Let’s see what the day’s got in store for us.”

She slung her bag over her shoulder and followed him up the broken stairs and into the afternoon air. As they walked, Jeanne relaxed into the feeling of her new coat. Heavy, but not cumbersome, warm but not stifling, she felt… good. Safe.

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she fussed with the collar, eyes on Deacon’s back. She opened her mouth to say something, maybe a “thank you” or “you didn’t have to,” or something equally idiotic, but he beat her too it.

“What do you think the ‘MR’ stands for on that holotape with the Courser radio signal?”

She shut her mouth, thanks dying on her tongue. They walked side by side now, sticking to the edge of buildings and skirting around rubble. The coat swayed around Jeanne’s legs, not too long, a split up the back making it easy to crouch.

“I’m unsure,” she said, squinting into the sunlight around the corner. “Mass...reactor? Perhaps related to Mass Fusion? I’m praying it has something to do with teleportation.”

“Logical, but lacks imagination. I was thinking… Minimal Reality. Magic Ring?”

“Master Reset,” she supplied, her voice flat as she clung to logic out of spite.

Deacon snorted. “Good one. That might actually be a contender but still...really boring. I still like mine. Oh! _Mr. Rogers_!” He sounded much to pleased with himself.

“How the hell do you know about Mr. Rogers?” Jeanne asked. “It’s been off-air for two and a half centuries.”

“I’m very well-versed, I told you.”

“Apparently,” she muttered. “Astrology, ancient children’s television shows. Are you sure you’re not a time traveler?”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Tom. If I were, would I stay in a timeline where anyone knew I was a time traveler?”

She gave up on that line of conversation, since technically _she_ was the time traveler. “What other old world entertainment shouldn’t you know about?”

“Big fan of Proust, actually.”

“Huh,” she said, eyebrows climbing towards the brim of her rattan cowboy hat.

He shot her a sly look. “Oh yeah, _youuuu_ speak French.” He waggled his eyebrows behind those glasses. “Think you could spend some time translating _Lee coat de Guer-mants?”_

Jeanne winced at his accent. “Crisse de tabarnak, you butchered it. _Le Côté de Guermantes_.”

“Sounds so much better when you say it.” He cleared his throat and then pronounced the title perfectly. He even got the guttural r just right. He was fucking with her: either he French or he knew how to mimic an accent, like a mocking bird. Her bet was on the latter. Mimicry was a key skill for a spy. She’d have to test him, try to trip him up. “Seriously though. Would love if you took a look some time. Give me a summary or _something._ The only copy I could find is in and it’s really a bummer. I need to know how Marcel fairs among the gentry. _”_

Jeanne huffed and let the conversation fade as the dead drop came into sight; an innocent trashcan basking in sunlight around the corner from Back Street Apparel. She edged into the open, holding up a hand for Deacon to stay back.

“Coast seems clear, boss,” Deacon said from behind, and she snaked over to the trashcan, reaching in to find a scrap of paper tucked into the strip of leather glued to the inside.

Deacon whistled from back in the shadow of the building and she looked up sharply to see a figure on the roof of the clothing store.

“Move it,” Deacon snapped and she did, making a break for his position.

“As much as I’d love to take out some raiders, I’d rather avoid a firefight,” she whispered.

Deacon nodded. “Agreed, boss. Let’s get clear and see what we’ve got.”

They got spotted half way past the building and they didn’t quite manage to avoid a fight, but Jeanne happily cleared the assholes on the roof while Deacon found a way forward that wouldn’t get them into more trouble.

Ten minutes later, they made it to the relative quiet of a half crumbled building, and Jeanne dropped into a chair, breathing hard. She took some fire, but her coat lining deflected everything but the blunt impact of the bullets. She was starting to really love the coat. She should say thank you.

Instead she pulled out the dead drop note and read it.

C. band signal found. .81 am. C.I.T. ruins. Gunner activity, possible lost package extraction needed. Urgent.

Jeanne passed the note to Deacon and he read it quickly before he lit it on fire with a flick of his lighter.

Jeanne held up her pip boy and turned on the radio. DCR jerked from the speakers—poor nervous Travis Miles stuttering through his Skeeter Davis intro. _The End of the World._ She actually really loved that song, the irony of it, how she’d never loved the world in the first place, but it kept going anyway...old lovers sort of signaled the end anyway, and— _Nate._ She should put him to rest soon.

_Soon, Nate. I’m sorry._

He smiled at her. He understood.

Jeanne fiddled with the dial to hit AM .81 to find only static.

“The band will tune in when we get closer,” she said. “I’m ready to move on this now. You?” Her voice sounded harsher than she meant it to.The things she would have to do to get the chip. More killing to get a step closer to her goal. More brain surgery. It was all for Shaun.

Deacon nodded. “I had a good feeling about this drop,” he said. “And now I have a bad, bad feeling about the Courser.”

“Me too,” she admitted, checking over her gear and stashing everything but the non-essentials. She dropped her bedroll and camp kit, anything she’d need for more than a day on the road. She checked everything else over to make sure it was all working and ready. Rifle, Deliverer, pulse mines, her extensive medkit (now almost stocked to her satisfaction), rations, water. She pulled on her scary-ass NCR rebreather helmet and strapped herself in. Grenades on her bandolier. Lots of them. It made her nervous how much havoc they could wreak—precision was more her game, but sometimes a little chaos was what got the job done.

Deacon slipped away to change, half visible behind a ruined wall. She averted her eyes, shaking her head. Not that any of her close-quarters living, from the army, to being part of CAAB, or even living in the Toronto squats afforded her a sense of modesty, but Deacon’s constant changing made her nervous, like she shouldn't be privy to these quick transformations from affable drifter to… whoever Deacon would become next. Minuteman, scavver, towny, bodyguard. The possibilities were endless.

He emerged a few moments later wearing what he called his road leathers, a tight set of pants and coat, a lone piece of leather armor strapped to his thigh for whatever reason, and that was it. She suspected all his clothes had some sort of protective lining because jumping into a gunfight wearing plaid was like jumping into a water full of chum and splashing, waiting for sharks. And he did it all the time. Glory confessed that he might even have ballistic lining in his wig, which was nowhere in sight now.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said.

He bowed a little, one arm out to the side, the other folded across his middle. “Better safe than sorry. Though very comfy, plaid and denim ain’t gonna cut it for this fight.” He turned to attend to his own gear.

A little thrill of anticipation washed over Jeanne as she watched him work from the corner of her eye. His face dropped into seriousness as he he picked up his rifle and checked it over, hands sure and almost forceful.

Affable. A comedian. Bit of an asshole. Stalker. Well, _former_ stalker. It was all in a day’s work. Still. Manipulative. Avoidant. A liar.

 _Crisse_ , she barely needed Psych 101 to analyze him him six ways to Sunday. She wouldn’t though. She wasn’t a therapist. Medical ethics demanded that she not pry and poke or make assumptions unless someone asked for her help. And Deacon certainly didn’t need her help keeping on top of Railroad work, or his personas, or whatever it was rattling around in his brain that made him lie. And really, at times it seemed like he practically ran the show.

She let him have those layers, the lies, the deflections, and even the thoughtful acts like giving her a coat and a gun and... _aw, hell_ , giving her the time of day, some conversation and banter, the quiet acceptance of her usual time-traveling circumstances. He did it without the pity that Piper and Nick heaped upon her...Deacon was a good partner and traveling companion. What she needed right now. But as she watched him check over his gear with a quiet, fierce sort of certainty, she realized that he was just a little bit scary, too.

~~~

Gunners crowded the old research building, making minutes stretch into hours. Each time Fixer checked her pip boy to check their progress through the old C.I.T. facility she found no more than a few minutes had passed. With each foothold they gained, the beeping from the speakers got a little faster, distorting and urgent. So did Fixer’s heart.

A trickle of sweat worked its way down her back as she took aim at the fucker with the missile launcher. Her shoulder ached from the kickback of her rifle, but it was a familiar ache now, a few years lost to her forced resignation from CAAB, but muscle memory was a hell of a thing. A missile exploded behind them and Deacon swore, something full of venom that she couldn’t quite make out. She rocked back to her knees, wincing as shrapnel slammed into her back but renewed on her target. Peer through the scope, deep inhale, crosshair on his temple. Time stretched and she felt the easy certainty of a well-aligned shot. She squeezed the trigger and watched an arch of red as Gunner heavy as he tipped over the railing and fell three stories down to the lobby.

 _Exhale_. _Sound off._

“Heavy is down,” she said. “Bridge is clear.”

“Great shot, boss,” Deacon said from behind. He was alive, then. “Let’s move.”

They fought upwards together, every step weighing more and more on Fixer’s shoulders with each tuneless beep of her radio. Tom’s words echoed in her head: _Radios, man! Radios!_ as she switched back to Deliverer, taking Gunners out with as many rapid headshots as she could. Something else exploded, shrapnel flying as she dove for cover across the catwalk that spanned the great hall below. Another flight of stairs, Deacon sniping from behind. He was a good shot and handled a gun with easy familiarity but not with possessiveness. He never got attached to weapons, discarding one when a better opportunity presented itself. Any tool for the job.

“Not sure if you’ve got my back or if I’m just your bullet-sponge, Deacon!” She called back after he stole another of her kill shots.

“A bit of both, Fix,” he holler back to her.

A Gunner rushed their cover and Fixer popped from behind the lectern that was slowly getting demolished to shoot him in the foot. The gunner fell and Deacon got him in the throat. Maybe that was how they worked. She wasn’t used to midfield.

“Stop stealing my marks!” she said, throwing a glare over her shoulder. He waved, shot her a cheeky grin, and reloaded.

 _“Tasse de marde,”_ she muttered, but as they fought up every hard-won inch of stairs, she found Deacon adjusting his style, whittling away at flanking enemies instead of the ones she took head on, while she did most of the damage.

The beeping became frantic as they breached the final stairs of the old building, and Jeanne’s heart raced along with it. She turned off the radio with a flick of her fingers and the beeping cut short to a resonant silence.

There. A pale man all in gray leather, advancing on a storage room door, a laser rifle in tow.

A half-dozen Gen 2 synths aimed their weapons point-blank at a line of huddled Gunners. The mercs held their hands above their heads in supplication, begging, knowing, lined up like they were on a curbside firing squad.

Fixer’s gut lurched at the sight.

 _Toronto._ People in a neat row on the curb. Begging. Resistors, fighters, politicians, grandmothers. The American MPs weren’t picky. That night. Timed her outing poorly, didn’t check the patrols. She ran. Chased down, dragged to the curb, the MP raised his gun to her head and she refused to squeeze her eyes shut. Defiant to the last, even with a tiny seed of barley-life in her belly, she would watch him pull the—

Fixer felt a warm weight on her shoulder.

_Breathing is a thing._

She wasn’t sure if she thought it or someone said it, but her lungs started to work again. She inhaled sharply of the petrichor air and gunpowder smoke. Deacon squeezed her shoulder and then the weight left as he dropped his hand.

She raised her gun. The pale man—the Courser—he turned away from the storage room door and fixed his dead-flat eyes on Fixer, stalking forward with the cool intensity of a hunting cat. Just like Glory, he looked completely human. But when he spoke, there was no rich-warm, wry tinged wonder that Glory had to her voice.

“You’ve fought through an entire deployment of Gunners to get here. Why?” The words drifted from the synth, flat and almost dreamlike, like his eyes. He moved the same way he spoke, and looked at things, devoid of expression and brimming with dispassion. Fixer almost found it hard to believe that this man could harm a fly. But then, she’d met some soldiers in CAAB who moved and spoke with that flat affect, almost inanimate except for the whole heartbeat thing, but when they raised a scope to their eye and sighted on a marked man...

She didn’t answer his question.

There, a spark of curiosity in the synth’s eyes at her silence. “Did you come for K1-98?” He gestured towards the storage room. “They Gunners were going to sell her. What is _your_ intent?”

So there was a synth. She inclined her head slightly. “No,” she said.

“You’re either here for the synth, or you’re here for me. Either way, you die like the rest of them.”

Fixer had no warning. The synth stood stock still before her one moment, and the next he launched himself forward, slamming her into the wall.

Her helmet rebounded on metal, rattling her head as something in her chest made an alarming pop. Not broken, but _crisse_ , she was going to have some spectacular bruising. Pain was a distant worry at this point. Adrenaline and some stimpacks would help that. She slid down the wall, grappling with the Courser, unable to keep his hand from wrapping around her throat. She she kicked out, knocking his rifle away with her knees so it fired wide, the bolt of red stabbing into her arm instead. She howled, kicking again but the Courser lifted her like a ragdoll. She braced for another slam against the wall, until the butt of a rifle slammed into the Courser’s elbow, hard enough that the fingers around her throat slackened. She fell to the ground, choking, and rolled away as Deacon hit the Courser again.

Fixer kicked herself to her feet and scrambled back behind the door. Deacon fell back to join her on the other side. She nodded in thanks for the assist and then looked for the Courser. He backpedaled towards the side of the room and vanished in a ripple of air. Fixer groaned. Stealth boy.

Across the room, the Gunners had turned on their synth captors and the two groups tore into each other with arcs of blue light and the rapport of rifle and pistol fire.

“Great, a three-way,” Fixer shouted.

She heard Deacon laugh. “Not your thing?”

“I prefer something a bit less complicated, yeah?”

He laughed again and Fixer scanned the room. Where the _hell_ was the Courser? Any moment he could be on top of her again, but stealth boys couldn’t last forever…

One of the Gunners stood over a downed synth, staring hard through the doorway, right at Fixer.

“Them’s the cunts that killed our squad,” the merc screamed, pointing. “That’s them! Get the ba—” Deacon’s rifle cracked and the Gunner jerked and fell back with a hole in his head.

Fixer’s eyes tore away from the Gunner when she saw a ripple and the Courser appeared back by the synth’s cell. “Look who’s visible again,” she said. “Your 4 o'clock.”

“And here I thought he was shy…” Deacon murmured.

Fixer glanced back at the Gunner, running towards them with something small, round… “Ah, _tabarnak de…_ shit, he’s got...grenade!”

She dove as far as she could and rolled. Shrapnel thudded into her back in a rush of hot air as the room rocked. Someone screamed.

Ears ringing, Fixer crawled out of the aftermath of the bomb. Thank god for the helmet, or she’d be deaf and half choked, maybe half her head missing.

“Deacon?” She scanned the room, found her partner slumped against the wall. “Deacon! _Crisse_...”

She ran at a crouch, the dust and debris from the blast covering her movement past the doorway. Medic brain kicked in. Enemies behind the door. Deacon. Airway? Unobstructed. Breathing? Yes. Bleeding? Yes. All his limbs seemed to be intact and there was no blood spraying from major arteries…. But there was a lot of blood pooling from a hole in his jacket. His sunglasses fell askew, half broken, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face. He opened his eyes, looking up at her with a dazed expression. A dull, far away part of her registered how she’d never seen anything but a glimpse of his eyes before, and how blue the were. Then she jabbed a stim into the meat between his neck and shoulder and he yelped in pain. He managed a wheeze of thanks and a… was that a _thumbs up_?

 _Crissie_ …

The stim would either get him back on his feet, or she’d win the fight herself and save his ass later.

She checked Deliverer. 30 rounds. Not enough. Through the smoke she saw more bright laser fire, red. The Courser. One blue. A synth still alive. The sound of gunfire meant two, maybe three Gunners still lived. She pulled a grenade of her own and tossed it towards the laser fire. Five seconds later the thing exploded and Fixer ran into the room amid the chaos following the blast, sprinting straight towards the Courser, Deliverer low and screaming silently in her hands as she fired at him.

The Courser’s head snapped around, eyes dead-flat as he tracked her. Gun raised, he backpedals as Fixer dashed towards him. A glance showed a figure huddled behind some overturned shelves in that holding cell. The Courser gave up his position, using the synths as his cover and Fixer pressed behind the doorway leading to the cell as fire rained down. Stim to her thigh, sting of a needle, heart racing as the cauterized burns on her arm and her bruised ribs started to heal. The Courser’s attention wavered as the Gunners laid into his back, but the synths held the line between them. Fixer grabbed her rifle and sank to a knee, training her sights on the Courser. No headshots. Cripple the limbs, maybe a gut shot.

Her eyes flicked over to the door where she’d left Deacon. He stood propped in the doorway, shooting half blind around the corner into the synths. Two of the remaining Gunners turned to advance on her position, the last one still shooting at the Gen 2s as Fixer whittled away at the Courser. He didn’t run. He advanced, returning shot for shot until Fixer’s exposed arm felt aflame with the raw sting of energy fire.

Her eyes flicked back to Deacon’s firefight. One of the Gunners went down, and Fixer took a crack shot at the other’s leg. He stumbled in a spray of gore. Six rounds left. Back in front the synths were down, and the closest Gunner rushed forward and leapt on the Courser’s back, bashing his head with with the butt of her rifle. Fixer snarled and found Deliverer in her hands, her own rifle clattering to the floor. The Courser spun his back to Fixer, snarling as he tried to get free of the Gunner. Fixer barreled forward and into the Courser’s legs to knock the brawlers to the floor. The Gunner twisted to land on top, flailing so she bashed Fixer in the shoulder with her foot as Fixer clawed her way up the tangle of bodies until she was close enough to shoot the Gunner in the head.

The merc slumped over the Courser and the fight died like a snuffed candle.

The Courser looked up at her from under the Gunner’s dead weight. Fixer pushed down on both of them, Deliverer’s barrel pressed into the Courser’s jugular, angled up to ruin his brain stem with a single shot.

“Project Wanderer.” She dug the barrel deeper into flesh and the Courser stared into the red lenses of her helmet’s eyes. “What is it?”

“You’re going to kill me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“No matter what I’ll tell you.”

She took a shaking breath, air raking her lungs and making her ribs pop. “Yes.”

“It is a test.”

“Project Wanderer? Of _what_?”

“Of choice.”

“What choice? Who’s?”

“It is the future of the Institute.”

 _Programed response,_ she thought.

“Virgil?”

“An annoyance.”

“Why did they take my son?”

“That is all I know.” His dead-flat eyes stared at her, dark and fathomless.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was so soft she hardly felt she said it at all.

“I am not.”

Her finger twitched, the gun jerked with the smallest of kickbacks.

Sometimes she hated that Deliverer was so silent. The lack of a ringing shot felt anticlimactic. Unfinished. Unfair.

The courser went slack, eyes sliding away to stare at the ceiling. She watched the dead synth—the dead man—for a moment before the world reasserted itself. Others lived for her to deal with. A captive, an enemy, and a partner.

The last living Gunner crawled across the floor, his leg bleeding. The woman locked in the storage room rattled the door, begging for freedom. Furthest away and most critical, Deacon was somewhere out of sight, presumably still injured.

“Hold on,” she called to the woman in the cage. “I’ll have you out of there soon.” The woman wailed in protest as Fixer marched back across the room towards the Gunner, kicking the pistol away from his grasping hands. She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up to his knees to face her helmet.

“You wanted to hurt that girl? The one in the cage?”

“Not hurt. S-sell her… Big synth trade, these days,” the Gunner gasped. “Make good s-slaves.”

Fixer’s gut lurched at the thought. She pulled him further up so he screamed, his broken leg scraping the ground. “You’re sick. I should shoot you in the head, right between the eyes. You want to sell that girl in there? Like she’s not a person? Yeah. I should shoot you. But I need a messenger. You tell your bosses. I _will_ take out any Gunner I see from here on. Two people wiped out your whole squad. Go tell them I’ll be waiting.”

He nodded frantically and she dropped him to the floor and pulled out a stimpack. His leg was oozing blood and riddled with bullets, but it should be enough for him to run on. She stabbed him in the thigh, dropped him another stim for the road and collected every weapon in arm’s reach, training a pistol on his head.

“Get out.”

He found his feet and fled.

She lowered the pistol, letting it drop from numb fingers. “Deacon?”

No answer.

She ran the rest of the way to where he made his stand and found him propped against the door, in a pool of blood, just out of the line of fire. She dropped to her knees and pulled off her helmet with a jerk, letting it clatter to the floor. The cool air felt like shock against her hot, sweat-damp face.

The blood smeared over his hands in shocking red, made the brown leather of his jacket darker, nearly black. Her hands found his shoulders, his neck, feeling for a pulse. He stirred, trying to groan but instead his breath rattled. Jeanne’s heart sank. She knew that sound.

“Can’t breathe?” Voice calm, easy, ready to save his life.

He nodded with a slight bob of his head.

“I’m going to lay you down, yeah?” He wheezed again, another nod, and Fixer eased him down flat on his back.

“Going to look you over now. Might be some poking and prodding, but you’ll be fine.” He nodded and she dug through her medkit for a stim, but held off until she knew what was wrong. People used those things like candy out here, but the cocktail of accelerated healing and adrenaline were bad for the heart, and could cover up and cause even worse problems down the road.

She forced his arms down so she could see the wound oozing dark blood from his chest. He’d unzipped his jacket and she peeled it open and sliced the the front of his shirt with her knife. Shallow cuts bleed freely, trickling over pale skin and the hair on his chest, fine and strawberry blonde, mixed with silver. Fixer scanned the rest of his chest, mopping away the blood as she went, and found exactly what she feared.

A pinky sized puncture, pulsing thick, deep red blood with each beat of his heart. It sat to the to the left of his sternum, just below the 4th riub. Traumatic pneumothorax. The wound sucked air into his chest cavity with each breath, an audible rattle setting her teeth on edge. She took his pulse again, fingers steady on his neck. Rapid, fluttering heartbeat as lack of air took his blood pressure into a dive. Skin clammy. He looked shocky.

“Okay,” she said. “I need to see your eyes, make sure you stay awake. Focus on me, yeah? I’ll take these off?” He attempted another nod but still flinched as she pulled the glasses from his face. “Look at me,” she said, and he stared straight at her, eyes wide and scared. Glazed, blue, dulled with pain.

“You’re breathing air into your chest. Not something a stimpack can fix on it’s own, but I can help you. Lay still and keep breathing as normally as possible, yeah?”

He made a noise that might have been an affirmative and Fixer left him for a moment.

Her mind flew ahead of her hands, making a plan. Simple three-sided flap bandage to slow the blood, let air out, keep more from getting in. Improvised chest valve, inserted through a space between the ribs, under the armpit to avoid vital organs. She dug through her kit and pulled out the bandages she’d improvised with adhesive, rags, and tarp and slid back to his side. She pulled his shirt away, moped the blood and applied the bandage and a stimpack. No more air in. The bandage also bought her time while she figured out how to get the rest of the air out.

She found a syringe full of Med-X, eyeballing it the length of the needle. It might just be long enough.

“No—” he managed to wheeze. “No…” He was going hypoxic, lips blue, face dead white.

She paused. “No chems?”

He wheezed what she thought was an affirmative and she nodded. She unscrewed the needle from the Med-X syringe and dumped the chem onto the floor. Deacon watched her like he was transfixed.

“It’s going to be fine,” she told him. “I’ve done this nearly a hundred times, in the middle of bombings and live fire. I’ll talk you through everything.” Her voice was slow, steady. An emergency, certainly, but Jeanne counted any blessing she could. At least they weren’t getting shelled by the Chinese while she tried to cut open mangled power armor to save even more mangled soldiers and prep them for evac.

Deacon watched her hands as she cut the tubing from a Rad-Away bag and improvised a suction tube with the Med-X needle and plunger. She looked up for a second and smiled. “This is a walk in the park.”

She heard him wheeze a single word. Sounded like _‘liar_.’

She shook her head. “Easy. I promise. Looks scary, but it’s simple. Just a pinch, and then instant relief, okay. Stim first, though. Yeah?”

She gave him the stim and checked the bandage. It was already seeping red and she put another over it. “ Hold pressure here.” What she wouldn’t do for another pair of hands attached to someone not mortally wounded. She guided his hand over the bandage and pressed down lightly. His eyes fluttered and she snapped her fingers in front of his face again.

“Stay with me, okay? If you fall asleep I’ll have to wake you up instead of fixing your lungs.” He stared at her, eyelids fluttering, and she kept moving, each step more hurried.

“Okay. I’m going to raise your arm. The needle is going in between your ribs, here.” She touched the spot near his pectoral muscle, just behind one of those two pale, faded scars that mirrored each other on his chest. He flinched and she pressed her palm there to warm the spot, show him where she’d be working.

“Sorry. Count of three, and a pinch.”

She pressed the needle through muscle on the third beat. He jumped and managed to hiss, choking on air that wasn’t there.

“Okay,” she said. “Relax. Relax. Look at me. At me.”

He stared, his eyes wavering, parted lips more blue than before. She pulled the syringe plunger up slowly, drawing air through the tube. It wasn’t quite a valve, but it would have to do. “That’s it,” she said.

He still couldn’t breathe. She rested an ear to his chest, wishing she had a stethoscope. “Deep breath.” He inhaled, chest rising, and there was a wheeze, but less than she expected. “Stop, stop.” One more pull should do it. “Thirty seconds. You’re doing great.” She kinked the tubing, depressed the plunger through a slit she’d made just in case she’d have to draw the valve twice, and then pulled more air from his lungs as she drew the plunger up again.

“Breath.” He inhaled and she pressed her ear to his chest, her world narrowing to the sound of his breath and what might be wrong with it.

“Good,” she said. “Another breath. You’re doing great.” His chest rose and fell, her head along with it. “Another.” In and out, in and out. She listened for that funny whistling-rattle that would indicate that there still air trapped in his chest. All was quiet, save for the smallest of rattles, and she didn’t hear the grating sound of crepitus, that awful creek of broken ribs. With no more air leaking into his chest, anything broken was on its way to healing thanks to a few stimpacks. It was as much as she could do.

“Okay,” she said. “Deep breath.” He inhaled.

“Dizzy,” he managed to croak.

“Good, that means your brain is recovering lost oxygen. Keep breathing. If you can roll over, hands and knees is the best way to catch your breath.”

“O..okay,” he said, panting. Still on her knees, she helped him sit up, shifting him so he fell forward on his hands, but his arms shook too much to hold. Jeanne sat back on her ass and let him rest his shoulders against her back to take the pressure of his trembling limbs. “Breathe with me.” She reached back put a hand on his shoulder, taking slow deep breaths, trying to control her own shaking as the adrenaline abandoned her.

He tried to say something, but it came out a croak. He coughed, and tried again, no more than a whisper and she tilted her head towards him to catch his words, heart in her throat. The trembling moved from her limbs into her chest, and she wasn’t sure who was leaning on who anymore.

“That really… uhg… took my breath away.”

She jerked and shook her head, and he wheezed a laugh into her neck. She didn’t even need to see him to know how pleased with himself he must look. At least he wasn’t going into shock.

“First real breath you can take and you come up with that?”

“And I was just about to complement your bedside manner, Doc,” he said, voice hoarse. He sighed, a faint, tired sound, and his body relaxed a bit, his breaths coming more full and regular. “The least you can do is pretend appreciate my jokes.”

She huffed, trying not to smile. No one had called her Doc since Toronto. “The least I can do is save your life.”

They both fell silent as he kept breathing.

“You scared me,” she said after a moment.

“Had you worried, huh?”

“I’ve seen more people die from explosions than anything. Sucking chest wounds are nothing to joke about. Can you sit on your own?”

“Yeah,” he said and drew away.

Jeanne stretched out her shaking limbs and looked around. The detritus of medical equipment lay around them, sharps and tubing and bandages, the floor slick with blood. Her eyes fell on Deacon’s sunglasses, and she picked them up. One lens was cracked, but she reached out and put thim into his hand. An instant later they were back on his face.

“That was scary as shit,” he said. “Thanks for the quick thinking. You really are remarkably stabby. Shivs, needless, glares. You’ve got it all.” She felt the question behind his words.

“No problem,” she said. “I used to be a medic.” The admission drifted out of her without a thought. She couldn’t muster the energy to care about protecting her past anymore.

“A doctor?”

“Sort of. In combat. For the army. I worked on soldiers. Didn’t always save them.”

Deacon fell silent and Fixer shifted, thinking about what came next. Courser brain. Take a life, save a life. Both her choices. Both vital. Her hands shook and she wrapped them tighter around her knees.

Kellogg all over again. Her gut twisted. Brains, no problem. Just meat. She’d been elbow deep in meat for years. Killing someone to _get_ to the meat? The _circuits._ Slightly a big problem. It was for Shaun. It was all for Shaun.

“You up for a little post-mortem brain surgery?” Somehow the the irreverence helped a bit.

Deacon pulled a face. She wasn’t sure but he seemed to tense at the question. “I think I’ll just lie here for a while and leave it to a professional.”

“Generous,” she said. “Give yourself another stimpack. I’ll be over there doing the dirty work.”

But she had one more thing to take care of. The captive, the synth. K1-98.

She called herself Jenny.

“We can help you,” Fixer said once she managed to get the door open.

Jenny shook her head. “If I’m going to live in this world, I’ll need to learn to survive. I’m better on my own.”

Fixer nodded. She understood that sentiment. “If you need help in Boston, follow the Freedom Trail, yeah? And stay away from the Gunners.”

“Yeah,” Jenny said. “I think I figured that one out, but uh… thanks?”

Fixer let it go and gave her her the pick of the firearms she collected instead, showing Jenny how to use safety, reload, and some basics of aiming. It was all she could really do.

Fixer watched Jenny leave through one of the side exits and then she couldn’t put it off any more. She rolled the body of the Gunner off the dead Courser and dug the bone saw out of her med bag.

~~~

After ten minutes of arguing about trying to make it back to Bunker Hill that night, Jeanne’s stubbornness won and Deacon admitted that there was a Railroad lie-low not far from the C.I.T. ruins, maybe a twenty minute walk away.

“I don’t like to burn hideouts,” Deacon complained as she dragged him through the darkening streets, one of his arms slung over her shoulders. He needed help climbing over anything more than knee high, and she’d threatened to make him a stretcher. He replied that he didn’t need one when his partner was the perfect height for a crutch.

“Too bad,” she said now. “This is exactly what these spots are for. An _emergency._ You not being able to crawl over some cinderblocks without a ten minute breathing break is an _emergency._ ”

He spotted the rail sign a few moments later. Jeanne picked the lock on the rolling steel door to a one-car garage and pushed it up far enough for them to both duck under. Inside the garage was clean and cool, stocked with a food, water, ammo, and a lone mattress on the cement floor. There was even a blanket and a pillow.

Deacon collapsed onto the mattress with a groan, settling himself on his back.

Jeanne settled herself into a folding chair and she watched him fidget for a bit before he stilled.

“You don’t have to sit there,” he said after a moment. “Take it from someone who sleeps sitting up a lot. It sucks.”

“You need rest to heal. And the faster you heal, the faster I can get this chip to Dez and Tom. I’ll take first watch.”

“You could just go. I’ll be fine, really. I’m old at at almost dying and then...not.” He watched the ceiling, arms folded over his stomach.

She shook her head. “You don’t leave a patient. Until I think you can take a deep breath without popping your lung, you’re stuck with me.”

“All right, doc,” he said, relaxing into the mattress. “I’ll reveal the luxury.” He tossed her the blanket, then winced as he propped his head on the pillow, and then he presumably closed his eyes and attempted to sleep. It was hard to tell behind his sunglasses. She had yet to give him shit for sleeping with those stupid things on, though it was on her to-do list.

She watched the slow rise and fall of Deacon’s chest for a while, listening for a rattle or a wheeze, but all she heard was normal, if shallow breathing. Her eyes grew heavy and she settled into the sounds of the old garage settling around them, Deacon’s breathing, the creak of the streets outside. The hasp gurgle of what she thought might be a pack of roving ferals. Distant gunfire, fading quickly. Something skittering inside the walls. Then the rain started, tapping on the metal of the garage door.

She held her rifle on her lap, Deliverer in easy reach, and just listened. The lamp she’d lit guttered and died, leaving the garaged in near total darkness.

She shifted, pulling off her coat and draping it over her front. Her mind drifted as she listened to the rain. The chip was safely tucked away in an empty blood bag. MR. Magic ring, maybe. _Heh_. Probably not. Project Wanderer. The Courser said it was about choices. More riddles. Shaun...stolen, trapped. But the Institute wouldn’t be strange to him. They took him when he was a baby. If he was ten now…he’d never even known her. _Lost, even if she found him._

_Somewhere out of sight, barely within her range of hearing, she heard Shaun crying. She was coming, she was going to reach him, no matter if he was half a year old or she was or ten years too late. She stumbled onto a body of a pale man with dark hair. The Courser’s eyes stared into hers, somehow accusatory even though they were glazed in death. They followed her around as she looked for Shaun. His head spilled brains and blood onto the floor, bright and glistening, and she found his body again, and again._

_Any lengths. She was so sorry. She tried to close the dead man’s eyes but Kellogg stared back at her instead._

_Fixer. Fix? Hey, wake up._

Her eyes jerked open as she broke through the dream. A wild, gasping breath shuddered through her and she spun, lost in the dark.

“What wa—”

“You were talking in your sleep.” She could just make out Deacon, sitting up in bed, hugging his knees.

“Oh,” she managed, pushing away from the chair with a groan, dragging the blanket with her. “‘m sorry…” She stood, intending to stumble out into...where? The empty streets? Anywhere. Away.

“C’mon,” he said. “I know you’ve got your pre-war values like privacy and personal space to stick to and all, but I don’t mind. Really. Wastelanders aren’t possessive about beds. You find one, and share it if you’ve got to.”

“You talk too much,” she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. “And you’re probably lying. Wastelanders don’t share.”

He managed a weak chuckle pushed over to the wall and she shuffled forward, neck complaining from the awkward way she’d slept. She sank to her knees and lay down.

“You talk too much, too,” Deacon said as she offered him one side of the blanket, big enough for two and then some. The mattress shifted slightly as he lay down on his back. “Only in your sleep though.”

The bed was almost as comfortable, minus the few springs digging into her sore ribs. She curled up with her back to Deacon, keeping as much space between them as she could without falling off the bed. Despite herself, Fixer sank into the luxury of a mattress below her and a blanket over her shoulders. A few moments later sleep found her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: That’s right the ONLY ONE BED TROPE. I've been wanting to write that one into a longfic for a while now. >:3
> 
> Next chapter will be a little while. This is essentially the end of Act 1, so I'm doing some planning and filling in the sketchy outline for Act 2.


	14. Preference Profiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: pov near death experience, breathing problems

Deacon

Deacon couldn’t breathe, which was a problem because breathing was a function required for being alive. 

There he was, slumped against a wall with a hole in his chest, pathetic and useless as Fixer got her ass kicked by the Institute’s most dangerous weapon. It wasn’t even the Courser that did him in. Blown up by a Gunner while he was too busy watching out for his partner to watch his own ass. Chest. Whatever was currently trying to kill him. He’d already one top surgery, thanks. This was just... _unnecessary_.

He tried to take another breath and heard a gurgle of blood and air mixing in a way that blood and air were never meant to mix. It sounded like someone was hanging out inside his chest, gargling. Gargling _blood_. Fucking _gross._

Maybe it was his jacket. The thing was ungodly tight. Maybe it was his vanity that was suffocating him. Maybe taking it off would help. Deacon fumbled with the zipper. Dragged it down with numb fingers. He immediately regretted the decision as a gush of blood trapped by his leathers poured down his front. He pressed his hand to his chest, over the ooze of blood. The stimpacks from earlier weren’t doing jack shit except to make his heart race, speeding up the bleeding out process. Now that he saw the hole in his chest, it started to hurt. _Son of a bitch._

He couldn’t even say the words out loud.

The room spun on a lazy axis. Voices. Talking. Very far away talking. They should talk over here, where he was dying and maybe stop talking and start helping him _not_ die. That would be nice. Ideal, really.

The room’s spin sped up a bit, colors pulsing in and out of existence with each beat of his heart, the throb of his pulse taking up residence in his ears. Deacon closed his eyes against the spin. The vague comfort of sunglasses sitting his nose felt like a fitting last stand. They were cracked but that was okay. At least he’d die pretty. 

He knew what came next. Final regrets. Failure. Deceit. So many lies, so much time lost. An entire future, erased. People still playing god after all these years. Slavery, barbarism. Barbara— 

He heard his name. So far away. His answer was more of a gugle than a ‘ _Hey, I’m over here suffocating for some reason. A little help?_ ’

Hands on his shoulders, then his neck. They burned, too hot against his skin, which was suddenly and frighteningly cold. 

“Can’t breathe?” 

That voice. He’d know it anywhere. The vaultie. Jeanne—Fixer was gonna be fine, then. That was good. 50/50 survival rate on a courser fight was good.

Fixer kept asking questions like they were having a nice chat, like he didn’t have a hole in his chest, like his heart wasn’t screaming in his ears.

 _Lay you down, yeah? Look you over, yeah?_ It was almost comforting. _Blah...blah..._

Edges go funny and white. That voice goes far away again even with those hot hands poking and prodding at him, taking off his shirt, pulling his hands down. A touch at his temple.

_...these off, yeah?_

Yeah.

No. Wait. No one touched his _fucking_ glasses.

_Look at me…_

Brown eyes. Longest moment of eye contact in his fucking life, really. Fathomless, really. Hard to see her face clearly, but eyes...pure calm, warm, clear. He’d laugh at her if he could. She was so _sure_ he wasn’t gonna die. 

_Trust me, yeah?_

Yeah.

 

~~~

Deacon woke flat on his back with one arm flung wide. He was safe, warm, and _comfortable._ He didn’t move for a while after waking, just lay there reveling in the rare sensory experience of a dry mattress below him, one that didn’t even smell too terribly of must. The mattress wasn’t in a room full of corpses or under a roof that leaked, either. He knew the roof didn’t leak because the gentle hiss of rain made for a pleasant backdrop to the luxury, tapping on the metal door and the ventilation windows that filtered the dim morning light. If the room didn’t smell so strongly of motor oil, it could have been heaven, except he wasn’t dead.

He should be dead. 

He took a deep, experimental breath and his chest pulled tight, aching, but he managed to get air. The regular amount of air required to not be dead. That was good. 

He opened his eyes with supreme effort, blinking a few times against the gummy film of sleep. He rubbed the gunk away from under his sunglasses—his backup pair to replace the cracked ones.

There was another novelty besides the comfort and safety of a mattress in a secret hideaway: the steady warmth of someone else’s body pressed into his side. 

Deacon pushed his glasses back up his nose and glanced down to see a dark head of hair tucked below his shoulder. He craned his neck a bit to see Fixer with her back to him, curled against his side. Her knees and one arm hung off the edge of the mattress and a glance to the wall confirmed that he had indeed been hogging the bed, resting on his back, right in the center. 

In his struggle to get Fixer to lay the fuck down and sleep for a bit, he _may_ have forgot to mention that he was a notorious bed hog. Unlike most of the reputations he cultivated or let run wild, this one was actually based in solid reality. Most people who shared a bed with him ended up just where Fixer was by morning. At least he wasn’t spooning her. _Jesus_. 

But they were even. Fixer talked in her sleep. _And_ she snored.

Deacon eased over towards the wall to give her some room and thought about getting up without waking her. The last thing he needed was for her to wake up smooshed against a partner she barely knew, shattering whatever delicate trust they were building between them—

Fixer stirred and Deacon went still. She rolled over with a little groan, a frown wrinkling her brows and she flung her arm over so it landed hard on his stomach. Startled, breath knocked from him, Deacon tried to swear but it came out more of a hoarse grunt than actual words.

She sat up with a start, like she waking from a falling dream and jumped back, sliding off the mattress and onto the floor with a little thud. Her hair a mess, her face the textbook picture of scandalized _._

“ _Crisse_!” Deacon tried to swallow a laugh and choked instead. Her eyes went wide and she crawled forward, reaching for him like he had another hole in his chest she needed to fix. “Oh, _fuck_. Did I hit your chest? Is there pain?”

Deacon shook his head, fending her off with a wave of his arm as an actual laugh forced its way out of him. 

Fixer’s mouth snapped shut, her concern slipping into a frown, a look Deacon liked to call doctor face. Carrington had a similar one. The two of them had a lot in common, actually. Maybe it was just a “grumpy doctor” thing. He snickered and Fixer reached over to poke his shoulder.

“Stop that.” 

“Ow,” he managed as a sharp little pain lanced through his chest. “You...ahhh ahaha.” He gasped a breath and fell back on the mattress with another stupid giggle. “Sorry, sorry. You really got...me there.” He coughed. “R-right in the gut.” He laughed again, still breathless.

She slumped back down onto the mattress and leaned against the wall. Deacon felt the disapproval radiate off of her without having to see her expression. “I’m disowning you if you laugh yourself into a relapse of pneumothorax.”

He snorted through his nose, trying to get a grip on himself at how hilarious the effortless medical jargon sounded.

“Nothing’s even funny.” Her tone leaned dangerously from disapproval towards exasperation. 

Deacon wheezed as his laugh started again. He glanced up at her to catch the ghost of a reluctant smile. 

“Brain damage from the lack of oxygen,” she muttered. She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you can laugh, you can walk. I need to get this _thing_ back to Tom, and you need to see Carrington to make sure you heal properly. And no smoking.”

The chip. Of course. Synth brains. Deacon had so far kept his thoughts the whole hell away from the details, but now the reality of it stopped his laughing in its tracks.

“You’re a real bear in the morning,” he said. 

Her frown resumed as she got up, running a hand through her hair to smooth it. He managed to keep himself from laughing again at the faint blush on her cheeks, the way her frown kept trying to twitch like she wanted to smile or how she wouldn’t quite make eye contact. Embarrassed Fixer was new, and...hilarious. 

“Yaoguai,” she corrected him, and he grinned.

“Yep. You’re learning.”

Deacon moved slowly as they got ready, chest tight and ribs sore. He hadn’t taken a hit like that since Wyatt’s HQ got decimated in ‘73. God, almost fifteen years ago. That fight had ended in three broken bones, internal bleeding, burns across a quarter of his body. Only four survivors. Deacon—though he hadn’t been Deacon back then—got rid of those scars as soon as he could. Even the Switchboard hadn’t been that brutal.

He stared down at his hands for a moment. Broad, square palms, short fingers. Callouses and little knicks, dry skin. Deep lines in his palms, the whorls of his fingerprints. Funny how one’s body and one’s mind could tell such completely different stories. At least he kept his fingernails clean and tidy.

The walk back to HQ took longer than Deacon would ever admit. His was still breathless, his chest tight with the occasional sharp pang. Fixer kept glancing back at him as she found a way through the ruins along the river. Still, he didn’t need to use her as a crutch anymore, though it was almost tempting to pretend he did. The rain still fell in a miserable drizzle, leaving him cold and clammy. As he’d discovered last night, Fixer was _warm._

The damp was even worse in HQ. The air reeked of dank soil, molding walls, rot centuries in the making, and though Deacon probably just imagined it, the smell of skeletons. Did bones have a smell? 

As soon as they arrived, Fixer dragged him to Carrington and abandoned him to go talk to Dez. It was the first time Deacon had ever been forced to seek medical attention in HQ. He itched under Carrington’s scrutiny as the doctor berated him, asked him what felt like a hundred questions to which Deacon had two-hundred pithy answers until Carrington gave up and sent him away with some foul smelling herbal syrup he had to drink and strict orders not to smoke. 

Feeling violated, Deacon wrapped himself in a quilted jacket and found a chair by Tom’s desk as he waited for the news to drop: Fixer was officially a courser killer. 

HQ should throw her a damn party. 

Glory kept shooing him suspicious looks and he kept grinning back at her like a mysterious idiot. 

Ten minutes later, Dez gave Tom the courser chip and Tom lost his shit with excitement. HQ collectively succumbed to the shit-losing soon after. Fixer got the brunt of the attention as agents admired her courser-killing skills and demanded the story, talking over each other, speculating on what the chip would tell them about the Institute. Deacon was grateful that she left out the part where he’d almost died, though if he leaked rumors of the incident later, it might add a bit more substance to the theory that he was actually immortal. 

Amid the whirlwind, Glory materialized a sacred package of Fancy Lads and shared them out. Deacon declined. Fixer got two. Deacon hid a grin at the look of pure bliss that flitted over her face when she took that first bite.

Things quieted down once Tom actually got to work hacking the chip instead of flailing wildly and ranting about radios and atomic reconstruction. 

Within hours, the betting pool on what _MR_ stood for tripled. It was the biggest since at least the Great Molerat Infestation of 2281. Drummer Boy could hardly keep up with the submissions and the caps folks put on them. 

So far, Glory’s “memory recall” had the most caps from the most people, because Glory was always a sure bet. She won a third of all their gambles. Fixer stubbornly stuck to her “mass reactor” guess, which rode in second place, but Tom’s “meridian realignment” had a solid, if small following from the true believers, most of whom had taken Tom’s serum. 

Deacon didn’t even bother to follow nuances of the pool but he did place several wagers for his various submissions under different pseudonyms, just to fuck with the odds. The only submission he put his own name on was “ _moist revenge.”_ He was the lone better on that one.

“Someone put five caps on ‘magic ring,’” he said to Fixer as they watched the betting intensify.

She shook her head. “By someone, do you mean _you_ under a another pseudonym?” Something new glinted in her eyes, something that screamed _liar._

Deacon held a hand to his heart, scandalized. “ _Moi_?” 

“ _Ouais toi, mon osti._ ” She snapped. Things always sounded snappier in French.

“I mean, you’d _think_ it was me. I’ll admit, the first three of those bets were mine. But this fourth one, this _Saint_ , or whoever.” He shook his head. “Never heard of Saint in my life.”

Fixer struggled to keep her face straight, that flat, glittering stare cracking into a reluctant little smile and Deacon cackled. “Oh my god, it’s you. Knew it.”

Fixer shook her head. “ _Non_! _Moi?”_ Her smile broke free and it was all the confession he needed.

“Come on. Your poker face is worse than Dogmeat’s.” 

“Gee, thanks,” she said, dropping her grin to glare at him.

“Pift, so sensitive. Dogmeat is beautiful. It’s a compliment.” 

Deacon kept his face painfully straight as she raised an eyebrow at him.

“That’s really not much better—”

 _Mouth, meet foot_. 

“Dogs are noble creatures, Fix.” 

Her eyebrows continued their climb, lips pursing.

 _Subject change...subject change…_ “Sooo, why ‘magic ring’. ”

Her mouth twisted a bit and she tilted her head, eyes going distant. “Whatever is on that chip, it’s going to be a lot less fantastic than a magic ring. Let me dream for a bit.”

She didn’t have long to dream, sadly.

 _Molecular Relay._ The words made Deacon’s blood run cold for just a moment as he thought of the implications, tried to make meaning out of it. He decided not to worry about it just yet.

Tom was beside himself. HQ fell to a buzz of whispers. Drummer Boy won the pool with his guess of “Mass Relay” and became 219 caps richer. The five agents who bet on Drummer’s submission won 40 caps each and the small remainder went into the booze fund. 

“Great work, pal,” Deacon said to Tom, settling himself against the firing range wall. “But what does it _mean_?” Maybe he misunderstood. Sure, teleportation was great way into the Institute in the abstract, but now that they had a way to do it...maybe...Deacon wasn’t sure he was going to be much of a fan.

“Molecular. _Relay_. They take your atoms and scramble em up and make a path for em via...guess. _Radio signals_ —” Tom took a breath and repeated himself. “Radio signals. The Courser’s got ‘em in their brains. The blueprint’s in the holotape, the signal’s in the chip. We can zap someone in there right now. I mean, we could, if we had the relay. We gotta build...the thing. The teleporter. Thing. Relay. Shit, man.”

Fixer listened with a carefully blank expression, arms crossed over her chest, stance wide. She looked a little pale, actually. 

“So, we’re going to build it.” she said. “It’s the only way in.” Her chin jutted, stubborn even though no one was arguing with her. She was probably having some internal debate about her sanity. Hers, and everyone else’s. 

Tom nodded like a bobblehead. “The chip has the frequency we need to get you in. The tape, the _MR_ tape has the plans for the actual teleporter. Most of em. Need some modifying but, oh man. We’re gonna need some serious scrap to make this happen. Concrete, metal, copper. It’s a mother. Gonna need space, power…”

Fixer sighed. “Give me a list of materials. I’ll find a location.”

Fixer got to work planning with Tom and Dez, and Deacon started to feel bad for her. Like, really bad. The woman was relentless, a workaholic. He’d never seen her do anything to relax or disconnect from the job or her mission besides sleep or zone out for a while. Deacon was married to the Railroad, sure, but he had hobbies, like sewing and being hilarious. Fixer was so single minded that it was starting to wear at her. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked, once she’d been loaded down with plans and lists of scrap needed for the relay, and several more missions from PAM and Dez. 

“Depends on why you’re asking,” he said. “If you want to take on another courser, then I’m knocking on death’s door and will wish you farewell. Now if you’re talking about nipping down to the pub for a pint…”

“Not precisely,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth. “Though a drink would be...nice. I’m thinking it’s going to be more of a run through raider territory down south for a day or two. PAM’s got a safehouse she wants me to set up and Desdemona has a compromised route we need to secure.” 

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, a brief flicker of concern before she schooled her face back into impassivity. “You still look pale, though.”

 _You’re one to talk,_ he thought. The dusting of freckles that usually looked faint now stood out in stark contrast to her drained face. 

“Fitter than a fiddle, honest. I’m good to go, partner.” Deep breath. Hardly a twinge.

Fixer nodded. “Good,” she said, “because I need to get the hell out of here.”

~~~

They picked up Dogmeat in Diamond City on their way south. Fixer took a half day to visit with Nick Valentine and the Wright sisters, the latter of whom had been keeping an eye on the mutt. The dog was beside himself to see Fixer, but Deacon managed to signal Dogmeat to completely ignore him, a trick they’d been working on every time the dog accompanied them on missions. Deacon didn’t need him to blow his cover ever again. While Fixer visited with her city friends, Deacon skulked around anonymously in his DC Guard disguise, which Fixer seemed happy to let him do. She seemed to understand that he needed to stay the whole hell away from a journalist and a private dick and—though she didn’t know it—one of his informants who happened to be the journalist’s little sister. They met up again a few blocks from the gates, and continued the journey south.

The weather grew legitimately stormy as they headed further south. The ground bogged out, flooded, and Deacon resigned himself to permanently wet boots and sodden pant legs. Fixer fared just as poorly, but Dogmeat bounded through the mud like he was born to it. 

The left the corpses of Sutter and his gang in their wake, floating between buildings in Hyde Park like soggy logs. Shitty place to die. Come to think of it, it was shitty place to set up camp, but Deacon had never known raiders to be picky or particularly bright. There was something perversely satisfying about two people and a dog taking on a fifteen-strong raider gang and utterly decimating them. 

Now they made their slow way through the boggy flats beyond Hyde Park, towards what Deacon hoped was solid ground. This mud was probably his least favorite thing ever, except maybe radiation. And mud...it tended to be radioactive anyway, due to the nature of mud being partly water, and the nature of water to be at least mildly radioactive. Still, their geiger counters were quiet for the most part, and Deacon continued to be annoyed. 

The treeline stood ahead of them, a stand of gnarled trees and low brush that was at once welcoming because it promised drier land, and incredibly foreboding, like some sort of evil thing lurked just beyond. A deathclaw maybe. There were definitely mirelurks moving along the treeline, breaking the horizon. Deacon’s eyes slipped back to his immediate surroundings when Fixer made a disgusted noise as her boot slipped on a tuft of grass and squelched into the mud. 

“ _This?_ This is where P.A.M. thought would good place for a new safehouse? It’s going to sink into the bog.” Fixer radiated scepticism as pulled her foot free. “And it’s full of these… _Crisse._ Whatsit…. _crabe_ … bogg… things.”

“Mierlurks,” Deacon supplied. “You know, rain isn’t bad. I don’t mind the rain. It’s the mud. Mud is the worst.”

Fixer made a noise that might have been disgust or agreement as she shook the slime from her boot. 

“Did you bring anything we can light on fire?” he asked brightly, eyes on the dim shapes moving ahead. “Mirelurks aren’t a huge fan of fire.”

“Molotovs, from the raiders.” She made a quick count from her ammo bag. “I’ve got three. Use them wisely.” She passed him some rag-stuffed bottles and they crept wide of the nest of ‘lurks. Or they meant to, until a spray of muddy water splattered them with an ungodly squelch and a ‘lurk hunter snarled at them, it's ugly face just a few feet away, mandible-things and grotesque little mouth feelers flaring at them. 

“Uh…” Fixer said. “Run…”

They ran, giving ground to hunter while Dogmeat harried the mirelurk with bites and growls, slowing its progress.

“I’ll make it expose the underside!” Fixer shouted back to him. “Hit it with the molotov then!” 

“Got it, boss,” he said, lighter already in hand.

Deacon watched with growing trepidation as Fixer let the creature advance on her, targeting a single leg. When the monster was close enough to slam her with a claw she dodged away and It followed. She fired again, and the thing reared up, exposing its weakest point. 

Deacon lit the molotov and launched the bomb and it shattered against the soft ‘lurk belly. The ‘lurk screamed, coming down hard on Fixer—at least where she had been. She was already running back towards his position as he finished off the hunter. 

The other ‘lurks came crawling, but after the Courser fight the rest of the fight felt simple. Whatever the Commonwealth threw at them felt simple after the Courser fight.

They worked their way backwards during the fight, skirting the edge of the dry land and and the marsh. Fixer stood her ground—always strategic—which allowed Deacon to fan behind her, fending off flanking with some well placed firebombs and whatever gun that came to hand. He tried not to steal too many of her killshots. Maybe one. Okay two. It was just so satisfying to hear the growl of frustration she she’d throw his way.

Fixer pulled a towel from her bag and wiped her face and the back of her neck, smearing grime more than removing it. Deacon didn’t look much better, he was sure. 

“Those things are utterly disgusting,” she said. “This whole place is just...so gross.” They wandered into the place they were supposed to make a viable base and Fixer stopped at a sign covered in...there was no other word for it. Slime. She sloughed it off with her arm, nose wrinkling as it spattered to the ground with a squelch. 

“Murkwater Construction Site,” she read. “Charming.” 

“There used to be a witch that lived here, fifty years ago.” Deacon said, looking around. It was spooking enough for that to be true, he thought. 

“Fifty years ago? How old were you, two?” Fixer lead the way deeper into the grove of twisted trees, foreboding and very much a place where a witch might take up residence. 

“I was twenty-one,” he said brightly. “Halcyon days, comparatively.”

“Yeah, right. What happened to the witch?” 

“I dunno. Just...disappeared one day. Creepy old Murkwater Dan. Had to come visit them to get a hex lifted. Scarred me for life.” Deacon let a little shudder rock through him like he was remembering the horror of it. “It was a truth hex. Couldn’t tell a lie to save my life, if you can believe it.” 

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Are you sure the curse was properly lifted?”

“ _Ouch_ , boss. That stings. _”_

“ _And_ you’re telling me you’re66,” Fixer said, heading for high ground and a half destroyed outbuilding. She dropped her pack and started to gather firewood. Deacon watched her work, fiddling with the little radio he’d picked up from Tom. The new, modified Morse Code system was in testing and he sent out a quick message for whatever agent was supposed to come take over the site.

.--. --- ... - / --- ..-. ..-. .. -.-. . / . ... - .- -... .-.. .. ... .... . -..

_Post Office established._

She watched him fiddle for a moment and then she shook her head. “How old _are_ you, really?” 

Deacon wiggled his fingers at her. “ _Ooooo_ , Fixer with the hard hitting questions. You’ve been taking notes from Piper, huh?”

Fixer chucked another log onto the pile and huffed. “Are you gonna help me with this, or what?”

Deacon shrugged, but started to wander the campsite with her, looking for burnable wood. Most of it was wet. “What about you?” he said. “That’s the more _interesting_ question since your the actual time-traveler. Let’s see… you would have been...185 years old fifty years ago?”

He heard her count under her breath and then she barked a laugh. “You think I’m twenty-five? You’re either trying to flatter me or you’re not very good at this.” 

“Ballpark. Twenty-five to twenty-eight.” He made a show of studying her and she raised her chin in a bit of a challenge. “‘Course you haven’t had the wasteland spa experience, so I could be off by as much as a decade.” 

“Half a decade. I’m thirty-two.”

“Huh. Seems about right, actually. Old enough to know better, young enough not to care, or something.” 

That startled a laugh out of her. “Okay. Back to the original question. How old are you?” 

Deacon shrugged, kicking at a half buried stick until it popped from the dirt. It would be too wet to burn, so he left it. “I don’t remember.” 

“Seriously?” Fixer stopped dead with an armful of wood, her eyes locking on him. 

He shrugged and his mouth twitched in what might have been an apologetic smile. Sometimes the realest things made the best-seeming lies. He wondered if she would believe him. 

_Sorry I can’t tell you who I am, Fix. Some of it I don’t even know._

She looked at him for a beat too long and then her face softened and he saw a tell-tale touch of pity—shit, she _did_ believe him. Just his luck that the Railroad’s secret weapon happened to be a human polygraph test. 

“What’s your best guess?” he said. He might as well roll with it.

She studied him like he’d done a moment ago and his gut shifted a little at the scrutiny. He had vague memories of her seeing him without his glasses. His eyes always gave him away. 

“Forty-five.” 

“That’s a bit low for my own guess,” he said. Not bad, really. “With this face I usually just tell myself I’m forty-eight.”

“Oh, I was close.” She started digging a fire pit and glanced up at him. “Gonna help me or what, old timer?”

“And this is why I never tell anyone my age. I’m too spry, and then the secret gets out. Better not start treating me like a geriatric. I can handle myself.”

“Piift,” she said. “Handle this.” She shoved the load of logs into his arms. “So, do you have a birthday?”

Ah. Trying to see if he could get more specific. If he really didn’t remember. It was a softball question, really. Deacon hummed in thought. “I like to make that up too, depending on my mood. Always fancied a summer birthday, though, especially in weather like this.”

“I always wondered what my sign was. Definitely not Capricorn…”

She chuckled a stick at him and he ducked, grinning.

“Maybe a Leo. Very noble. Handsome. Charming. _Bold_.” He stared into the horizon to strike a heroic pose, made difficult by the bundle of wood in his arms.

“I know shit-all about astrology, but that sounds a little far-fetched,” she said. “Is there like...a mirelurk, or a...molerat sign or something?”

“I would be honored to bear the sign of the molerat. Profound little creatures. I love them.”

Fixer snorted and shook her head. “Molerat is is. Make the fire? I’m going to see what kind of site were working with.”

“You got it, boss,” he said, breathing a sigh once she was out of earshot. 

His stomach growled and his thoughts turned from guessing games towards what they were going to have for dinner. There were some fresh mirelurk kills, and he had some pre-war food in his bag... 

It was dark by the time Fixer was satisfied with her surveying. She had little to show for it besides a few bags of concrete, fertilizer and a lot of scrap metal. She flopped down onto her still-rolled bedroll like it was a cushion and stretched out her legs with a groan. Dogmeat got his own bowl of what Deacon thought was radstag meat and then he settled down at Fixer’s side, head on his paws, panting gently. When she was done feeding the dog, Deacon passed her a bowl of mac n’ cheese he’d doctored with tato and mirelurk meat. 

“This whole thing is a swamp.” Fixer waved her fork at the ancient construction site. “That said, the terrain on all sides is open enough to see anyone coming, and south-west of here is a settlement that might send help if we play things right. It’s going to be hard to keep this area secure though, especially once some new raiders spring up in Hyde Park. Gunner territory to the east _and_ west...”

Deacon threw another log on the fire and watched it dance and hiss. He was halfway to dry now, and would huddle by the flames all night if he could.

“It all sounds quite terrifying when you put it like that.” It _was_ worrying, being this far from civilization in such unstable territory, but they needed a location down here, a place for packages to rest before they made their final push out of the Commonwealth. “We could post a few heavies? Regular patrols. That looks… bad. Too much activity. I know PAM’s playing the odds, seeing where we need territory, but Christ—” 

“ _Crisse,”_ she interjected with a little smirk. 

“Ah, first French lesson. Swearing.”

“It’s really the first thing one should learn when acquiring a new language. More authentic that way.” Fixer chewed thoughtfully on her 210 year old mac ‘n cheese. “Dinner isn’t bad, by the way,” she said. “But seriously, I think I’ve got an idea. What about using the Minutemen? We could make this look like just another settlement.”

Deacon almost choked on his mac ‘n cheese. “Uh. Sorry boss. Remember that little thing called operational security we’ve got going on? The part about _no one knows anything at all about us ever?_ ”

“I know. And _that_ has cost the Railroad in efficiency over the years, yeah? I can see the strain. I’m going to Sanctuary to talk to Preston.”

Deacon put down his bowl and crossed his arms. “You have to tell Dez. She’s the one who plans the routes and authorizes us to blab about our operations to outsiders.” 

Fixer got a look in her eyes that told Deacon she was going to steamroll right over anything laid in her way. “Mmmhm. And you’re the one who decides what intel actually gets to Desdemona.” 

Deacon relaxed his own frown, trying to keep his face neutral even as his hackles started to rise. She saw right through him, then. She—

 _Minutemen?_ Ugh.

“Okay,” Fixer said. “Well, there are settlements springing up all over the map. Pick a few strategic spots.” Her accent grew more pronounced, eyes sparking with passion. She was too good at this—strategic, long term thinking, prying into things she shouldn’t. _Helping._ “We seed them with a Heavy or two, and some tourists, or make some folks _other_ tourists. Funnel the packages through those ‘safe’ settlements. Run them south.”

“Or North.”

“North?”

“Classified.” 

“ _Tabarnak!_ ” Fixer slumped back against the wall. “Deacon, I can’t help unless I know things. I can help.”

“You already do,” he said. “And the Railroad’s starting to realize it, but trust takes time. You’ve skyrocketed to MVP, sure, but you’re still a rookie in Dez’s eyes.”

“Look,” she said. “The Minutemen are starting to connect their settlements with supply lines. We could have a Heavy planted on the lines we need. A synth passes as a caravan hand or settler, and tags along. Then you get the added bonus of extra fire support from Minutemen patrols and settlement militia who will do anything to protect their supplies.”

“They’ll turn on us.” Deacon didn’t like how hoarse his voice sounded, his throat constricting. 

“Preston wouldn't. He’s the most noble person I’ve met...even before the war. You’re always going on about trusting my gut. And my gut says we need help. He’s the best one to pick.”

Deacon’s own gut twisted when he thought about it. Fixer had a streak of nobility as well, though she always did what she had to do. Ending up with the Railroad felt inevitable for her. But...what if she’d chosen the Minutemen instead? She was starting to get invested in the Commonwealth, accept her new and permanent reality. She could easily abandon the Railroad when she unearthed more and more of the things they did to keep synths safe. 

“He’s one man. Maybe he wouldn’t turn on a synth, but he can’t be everywhere. He can’t change people’s minds.”

“He can start. It’s a process. Change takes...time. And _work._ This world fucking mess, Deacon. There are resources just laying around. Where’s the infrastructure? _Crisse_ , it’s been 200 years and people think scavengers are the scum of the earth. You think class warfare would have ended in 2077, but no, here we are.” Her fingers curled into Dogmeat’s fur and the dog yawned up at her. “I think the Minutemen might change that. They can _build_ things. They can help.” 

“They didn’t 60 years ago.” Deacon didn’t like the dangerous edge to his voice.

“And you were there as well?”

He shrugged. “I’ve told crazier lies.” The past stretched out behind him, dizzying, and for a moment he couldn't breathe again and his his heart started to knock against the cage of his ribs like it wanted to get out. 

The venom seeped into his tone, his posture when it poured out of him. “Do you know how many synths have _died_ in settlements? There are bigots _everywhere._ There’s nothing safe about it. Nothing in the past sixty years has changed people’s opinions of synths, and with the Institute fucking _replacing_ people, that’s not going to change any time soon. People have legitimate reason to be afraid of the Institute, and its the synths who suffer for that fear. Synths are the only thing from the Institute these people can get their hands on. Literal, murdery, lynch-mob hands, in some cases.” 

Fixer drew in on herself with a thoughtful frown, looking admonished. A sliver of guilt wormed its way into his chest between all the heart pounding and the poison. 

Another open mouth, insert foot moment brought to you by Deacon. He had no right to unload on her like that. No right. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know what it was like, all those years... How little difference they really made, no matter what they tried. 

When she spoke again her voice went soft, her eyes full of...something soft. Softer than he was used to. Nothing good. No one should look at him that way. Not with pity.

“I have—I’ve done this before. Seen this before.” Her expression flitted from agitated to resigned and back again, frowning as she seemed to reconsider her words. The “It’s an idea. I’ll refine it before I bring it up to Dez.” 

He shrugged. “It’s a good idea, really. But it’s dangerous. Dez will say no-can-do.”

“Deacon, I know you’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t know all the shit the Railroad has been through, but I do know you’ve put a lot into this. But, maybe someone who doesn't know the ropes could see something new in all this mess? Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. His heart settled a little, and embarrassment rose up instead, making him shift and avoid her eyes. Not that she could tell. Thank god for sunglasses. “Sorry for the hardassarey, Fix. Operational security. Compartmentalization. It’s vital. You’re talking about breaking some serious organizational structures that have been in place for decades.” 

_Ones that I built. I made them because I’ve seen too many people die._

He watched her through the smoke and waiver of heat from the fire, and then sighed. “And it’s been a long time since I’ve had a partner. Takes some getting used to.”

“What happened to your last partner?” Her voice went hushed, like she was speaking of the dead. 

“Went a little crazy. My fault. I think it was all the showtunes.”

“I think I’m seeing a glimpse of my future, all of a sudden.” She chuckled and shook herself, as if trying to rid herself of a weight on her shoulders. “Deacon, I—”

Dogmeat’s head shot up, ears pricking as he stared beyond the darkness, and they found their feet in a moment, Dogmeat surging ahead. Fixer stepped around the fire with Deliverer up and ready and he followed her into the dark drizzle beyond the campfire. Deacon let his sunglasses slide down his nose, his eyes adjusting quickly to the gloom. 

Dogmeat whined, and Deacon heard a faint _hello_?

A thin man in a ragged coat crept forward. 

“Who are you?” Fixer’s voice was soft. Scary soft. “What—”

“Caretaker. I—I received a message. I am the one to run this place. Got a message.” His eyes darted, glancing at the dog, Fixer’s pip boy, and Deliverer, trained on his head. 

Dogmeat sat at Fixer’s side, the brush of his tail wagging gently on the wet ground and completely at ease. Fixer was truly blessed to have found such an animal, the ultimate barometer of character. 

“Do you have a giger counter?”

“N-no. M-mine’s in th-the sh...sh-shop.” 

Fixer lowered her gun and gave her dog an absent scratch, and Deacon slid from the shadows. 

“Come on in,” she said. “I think there’s some food left over.”

“The dog?” Caretaker asked.

“Friendly.”

“And him?” He jerked his chin towards Deacon.

“Partner.” 

Fixer guided Caretaker into their little camp and Deacon saw the agent’s eyes flutter towards him and then away. _Traumatized_. Still trying. Wasn’t a Switchboard survivor. Maybe another safe house that had gone dark in the past year. Deacon’s guess was Herkimer. 

“I’ll take first watch,” he said. “Caretaker can use my bedroll. No need to double up.” He shot her a cheeky little grin. “I don’t fancy getting punched in the gut again.”

Fixer rewarded him with an eyeroll and he slunk out into the trees keep watch on the horizon and to eavesdrop on the plans Fixer made with Caretaker. Pretty standard building and construction stuff. Trauma and survivor status confirmed. Nothing about Minutemen. 

He heard her footsteps a while later, after their conversation sputtered and died. Deacon glanced down at her, wondering if she wanted to continue their conversation from before. She held a steaming cup of something that smelled herbal and familiar, something comforting. Gourd blossom. His go-to tea.

“I...um. Made some tea. Do you want some?” She glanced sideways at him as she cradled the cup in her hands. “I’ve been talking to Carrington about medicinal herbs and… and though I might as well try to learn something useful since—” She sighed, her breath misting in the cold night air.

_Since you’re stuck in this shithole future._

“Since I don’t have the same medicines I used to have access to.”

“Want to learn some wastelander medicine, huh?” 

She nodded and offered him the cup. He took it carefully.

“Cheers, Fix,” he said.

“It’s nothing.” She wavered, like she wanted to go but was waiting for him to say something.

Deacon hid a smile and blew over the surface of the tea before taking a sip. Gourd blossom, carrot flower, something astringent he couldn’t name. “It’s good,” he said. “There’s...gourd blossom.”

“Yeah. It’s good. Antibacterial. I noticed you drink it a lot. There’s bloodleaf too, for healing. That lung injury is meded but it can have complications.” She looked at him and shrugged. “First attempt. Do let me know if you start growing extra limbs or glowing so I can revise the recipe.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said, taking another sip. 

“Welcome,” she said, staring out into the darkness of the mudflats beyond the trees. They stood quietly for a few minutes, and Deacon’s mind started to wander. Gourd blossom. _Gourd blossom_. She’d been learning his preferences. 

She gave a little start when Deacon shifted positions, like she had forgotten he was there. 

“Wake me up in three hours,” she said, suddenly brisk, and left him alone to keep watch with a cup of tea and his rifle.

Deacon felt a creep of paranoia rise up his spine. Damn. He’d been working on his own for too long. He’d forgotten a simple social law, reliable as gravity: spending time with someone meant they’d learn things about you, like the kind of tea you liked. Deacon wasn’t used to spending enough time with anyone for it to become a problem before now. He was being careless. 

But things were changing. Fixer wasn’t fucking around. At this point he was ready to chuck out the mental dossier he’d been building and follow her around the Commonwealth trying not to leave his mouth hanging open in awe too much of the time. At this point it probably didn’t matter if she knew what kind of tea he liked. They were going to build a fucking _teleporter._ Assuming everything happened just so (which it never did), she was going to the Institute. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm looking at my chapter outline and you guys what I have I gotten myself into? This is gonna be. L o n g . But the good news is that it gets much ship-ier from here. There are even kisses on the horizon.


	15. Time for Proust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really tough for me but the end is worth it.
> 
> CW for panic attack

Fixer

“Ah, Sanctuary. The talk of the Commonwealth these days,” Deacon said as the bridge to Jeanne’s old life came into view. “Think it’ll ever rival Diamond City?”

“God, I hope not. Their infrastructure is a nightmare.”

Jeanne’s eyes roved over the half built junk fence and the new structures that lay beyond.

A blue and white flag snapped in the breeze at the gates, made pale by the blinding blue of the sky. The rain had died as she and Deacon made their way north, running other missions for PAM and Desdemona, and the light was almost painful after a week of rain.

The glare made Jeanne squint up at the who halted them with a shout.

“What’s your business here, drifters?” the woman asked.

Jeanne felt a stab of irritation that she recognized by the guard, immediately followed by the stunning realization that there was no reason the guard would know her. It wasn’t like she’d been back here since she’d met Preston. It wasn’t like anyone would know that Sanctuary had been her home.

She wondered if Deacon knew. He’d probably been here already, following her since before Diamond City. Did he know she’d been in the Vault even before she de-thawed? She wouldn’t doubt it. Did he know about Nate? A little bubble of resentment rose up in her chest at the thought. She’d worked passed the stalking at this point. God knew she’d done some fucked up things in the name of “resistance.” No...the resentment came from another place. If he’d been following her since Sanctuary, he must have known how horribly scared and alone she had been. Why hadn’t he helped her? Deacon was all about helping. He was almost as helpful as Nick Valentine.

Maybe he hadn’t been able to trust her. She wouldn’t have trusted her. Maybe it didn’t matter. It still stung.

The woman cleared her throat and Jeanne shook herself. “We aren’t drifters. I’m a—” her brain scrambled for a way to explain who she was that didn’t involve a dissertation or some complicated diagrams—“a scout for the General.”

The guard frowned for a moment and Jeanne was just about to start shouting for Preston or Codsworth when she lowered her gun and waved them on.

“Eyes are on you, strangers,” said the guard. Jeanne gave her a casual salute as they passed through the gate, eyes roving over her old home.

Jeanne expected to see house after house of yellow and robin's egg blue. Instead, she found shantytown of wood and metal, the houses gone. The buildings were mostly a single storey high, but a few clustered structures looked like they were aiming to be taller, and one even had what might be the skeleton of a balcony. Generators chugged somewhere nearby.

Two houses still stood; the one Sturges used as a workshop, and her own. The old house hypnotized her for a moment, and the world seemed to stretch, come untethered from itself as she stared at the husk of her old life.

"Jeanne!"

At the sound of her name, she startled and the house let her go. She turned and a burst into a grin when she saw who it was.

Preston, jogging towards her up the southeast hill, waving. She met him halfway, holding out her hand for him to shake. Preston laughed and pulled her into a hug instead. She stood there for half a second and then her arms raised and she gave him a quick squeeze around the middle before stepping away, feeling distinctly ruffled.

"Hello General," she said, smoothing the front of her coat with a bemused smile. “You look well.”

"It’s good to see you!” Preston studied her a moment, taking in her coat, the red-eyed helmet that hung from her pack— “It’s been since when, Hangman’s Alley?”

“We really need to rename that place.”

“Sadly, I think it’s stuck.” Preston looked around at the buildings under construction and held out his hands like he was offering the place to her. “What do you think?”

"It's coming together," she said her eyes roving the settlement again. "I’m impressed. Honestly, it might even be an improvement from the pre-war veneer."

Preston frowned at her as they fell into step, Deacon trailing behind. "Don't say that," Preston said. "This isn’t an improvement over the end of the world."

Jeanne swallowed a tart reply about hectares of blighted land sucked dry for oil, clear-cut forests, refugee camps and urban squats, and the sharp contrast they made to places seemingly untouched by war and exploitation. Places like Sanctuary Hills.

"I'm sorry, Preston," she said instead. It was hard to be bitter around him, though resentment still settled in her stomach. "It's just nice to see some change, yeah?"

"Of course." He glanced back at Deacon. "The bodyguard is working out, I take it? Deacon, right?"

"Yep," Deacon said, tipping his hat. "Neither of us are dead so I'd say so."

Preston studied him for a moment and then nodded, turned back to Jeanne. "Want a tour?"

Jeanne grinned. “I’d love one. And Codsworth?”

“He’s taken up farming,” Preston said.

They trooped down the hill and she caught the glint of sunlight on metal and called out. A moment later, Codsworth was then.

Preston wandered off to give them a moment, and when she looked around, Deacon had vanished as well. It was probably for the best. It was easier to open up to Codsworth when no one was watching, and he deserved whatever she could give of herself.

“It’s so…” she took a breath, a swell of guilt and relief mixing in her gut. She’d somehow forgotten that Codsworth was family. She had more than Shaun. “It’s so good to see you Codsworth.”

“And you, mum. I’ve been terribly worried for you. General Garvey gives me updates on your travels when he sees you, but you _must_ come visit more often, if just for the sake of my poor servos.”

She patted his chassis, feeling the soft hum of his machinery beneath the sun-warmed metal.

“I’ll try. I’m safe out there,” she said, lying through her teeth. “I’ve been working on a way to get to Shaun. The Institute...they took him. I don’t know why, but…” she huffed. “Can we talk later? I need to make plans with Preston and Sturges. And you as well.”

“We’ll get you settled first, mum. Will you be staying long? The old house is—”

She shook her head, her spine creeping like there were eyes on her back, watching her. “No, Codsworth. The old house...It’s too much for me. Can you just find me a bed to stay the night? Maybe on the far side of the settlement, where it’s quiet?”

“Of course, mum.” His voice was stiff in a way that meant she’d requested something he disapproved of. “Follow me.”

“I have a friend with me as well,” she said as they climbed the hill. “He’ll need a spot too.”

“A friend, mum?”

She nodded. “He’s helping me find Shaun.” ...though currently he was being no help at all. She was about to drop a molecular relay on Sanctuary and Deacon was nowhere to be seen.

Preston caught up with them as Codsworth lead her across the settlement to her “accommodations.” People stepped aside and saluted as they passed, murmuring _General_ and _Sir._

“You’re getting a reputation,” she said shooting him a sideways grin.

Preston sighed. “I still wish you’d taken the job. The attention...it’s…”

“It suits you.”

Preston grumbled as they entered a long, low bunkhouse overlooking the back of the fields, each room with an individual exit. It reminded her of a motel, or a camp lodge. Preston ushered her into one of the rooms. It was cozy, with a bed on an actual bed frame, with actual bedding. A quilt, with a pattern of tiny blue and yellow cornflowers. There was a lantern and some candles, an armchair in one corner, and a crate for a nightstand, and a window let in the cool afternoon breeze.

“I’m sorry this is the best we have, mum,” Codsworth said, hovering up and down like he was hopping anxiously from foot to foot.” I’ll try and find you something a bit more comfortable next time—”

“No, this is perfect,” she said. “Thank you, Preston, Codsworth.”

Preston smiled. “You know if you need anything from us—”

And there it was. “I was actually….going to ask for a favor...” she let her voice trail away and Preston shook his head at her with a sidelong smile.

“I figured there was a reason you came. The Minutemen owe you. You saved us in Concord and then you turned around and gave us this place. And the little missions you run when you can, spreading the word, helping people? You’ve done...a lot. More than most people do. We can help you in return.”

Jeanne nodded, and wished Preston was easier to lie to.

“I need some land. About half an acre.”

“For what.”

“A generator. A big one.”

Preston frowned at her. “We have generators. If you need them...”

“A really big one. It could power all of Sanctuary.” That was true at least.

Preston watched her closely, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “Is it dangerous? I’ll help you as much as I can, but the settlers come first.”

“Something I’ve learned out here, Preston? Everything is dangerous. But no more than raiders, or radiation. Less, actually. And I promise you, it’s a step towards helping me find my son.”

Preston nodded. “There’s some unused land in the northwest corner. We were going to put more fields there, but if you need it...it’s yours.”

Jeanne smiled at him and he gave her a measuring look.

“Generator, huh?” Preston shook his head. “Really, Jeanne. If there’s anything you need…”

“I’m okay, Preston. Thanks.”

~~~

Jeanne wandered Sanctuary on her own for a while, half taking in the sights, half looking for Deacon. A breeze whistled through the trees on the edge of the settlement, sending dappled, erratic light and shadow dancing over the ground. It almost felt like spring in the air, though it was the end of December. Piper had tried to explain wasteland weather to Jeanne, and from what she gathered it was mostly “seasonless” except for the unbearably hot summers, which seemed to come around whenever they felt like.

She found him sitting against a tree at the edge of the forest above the north side of the settlement, looking like a hayseed in his cowboy hat and Minutemen inspired getup, chewing on a long blade of grass.

He waved and stood when he saw her.

“Look who it is,” she said. “Farm life doesn’t suit you?”

“Nah, farms are great,” he said. “I’m a huge fan of food.” His head tilted to the side. “How’re you holding up?”

“Preston’s giving me space here to build the relay. He thinks it’s a generator. If all goes well, we can repurpose the power supply to actually power the settlement once I...once the relay is operational. I think he knows there’s more going on but he’ll leave it be. We’ll have to send word to Tom and Glory—”

Deacon held up his hands. “Woah, woah. Briefing can wait. I mean _you,_ Fixer. It’ can’t be easy being here again.”

“Eh. _Comme ci comme ça._ ” Jeanne shrugged and Deacon gave her that look he did when she answered him in French, narrow eyed and smirking. “Could be worse.” _Could be better._ “My Mr. Handy is here. Codsworth. Would love to see my old house torn down...but I’ll keep it for his sake. For now. Maybe turn it into a museum. Piper can run ads for it, three caps a tour. _The Woman Out of Time Capsule._ ”

Deacon chuckled. “That’s pretty good, boss.” Then his smile faded and he seemed to struggle with his words, looking vexed. “Wanna take a walk?” he asked after a moment, nodding his chin up the hill into the forest.

“Towards the vault?” So far, Jeanne had been doing a fairly good of job of pretending that Nate wasn’t up there—down there...whatever—but she shook her head. “Not really.”

“I wouldn’t ask, but it’s...it’s important. I want to show you something.”

He was being weird. Too serious, compounded with his earlier disappearance. Something was up. She frowned at him and then nodded slowly.

“You’re being strange,” she said as he lead the way up the hill. “Well, more than usual.”

“I do try to keep you on your toes,” he said, glancing over his shoulder with a little smile. THey headed just west of where the vault would be. The ground was rocky here, rough stone and loam making the going tricky. They made it to the top of the hill and Jeanne could just see the open ground of vault entrance from the corner of her eye.

Ahead of them sat a wooden structure, something like a hunting stand or a guard post, except it wasn’t guarding anything. A splash of white paint denoted the ally railsign. An old ashtray and a few empty soda bottles lay scattered nearby. Deacon took the chair and stared at his hands.

Her eyebrows raised, a sinking feeling in her gut as she took in the little stand. She knew what it was, but she asked anyway. “What is this?”

“This is where a tourist spent time watching the Vault.”

She frowned as realization dawned. It was obvious, in retrospect. “The Railroad knew about 111?”

He shook his head. “I knew about 111. Well, Dez knew, but never cared.” He took off his hat and picked at a loose bit of stitching around the brim. Without his wig he looked older. He looked his age, whatever that was… She didn’t care, didn’t mind if he was lying or not. It’s what he did.

But he wasn’t lying now. And it was _weird._

He cleared his throat after after a moment of deep hat-studying. “I’ve had the place watched on and off over the years whenever we had the resources because...come on. Mysterious vault? Who knew what was inside. Who...or how the Institute might use them. How the Railroad might...use them.”

“Any advantage,” Jeanne whispered. Deacon nodded.

“And then...not that long ago, a few months maybe, there was Institute activity in this area. Whenever that happens, I put a tourist on it. The day you got out, I got a dead drop notification in chiper—only some very select tourists use it—it just said Vault 111. So, I came here. And I found you.”

“You saw me? Come out of the vault?”

_Gasping, shaking, stumbling into the light. She thought she’d never be warm again. Could have used some human contact._

“No. After.” He shook his head, and she felt distant relief that her first moments out in the Commonwealth were her own. “When you got back from Concord. Power armor. You were hurt.”

“I was.” She went cold and her hand jerked as she kept it from touching the raised scar that ran from temple to jaw. “I nearly died. You didn’t…? I needed help...”

He swallowed hard, his throat visibly tightening. “I...know. I hesitated. You were already taking care of yourself by the time I was about to stealth boy over to you and give you a stim.”

“I was probably better off in my own hands anyway.”

“I had no way of knowing that. I wish I’d just—”

“No.” She cut over him, slashing the the air with a shaking hand. “No ‘I wish.’ You own it, or this conversation is done.”

He nodded slowly and Jeanne backed off a little, settling back to sit against the stand. It was sturdy enough for her to lean her full weight and she crossed her arms over her chest, steeling herself.

“So this is where it started? Not Diamond City?”

He nodded, his face stricken, and she sighed.

 

“Here,” he said. “I painted that rail sign myself.”

“Ally, eh? Why didn’t you make contact if you thought I was an ally?”

“It was a hunch. I hoped. You gave signs. Your disorientation. You were relentless. But you could have been anyone…Institute spy, some kind of plant, or lure or…”

“Or?”

 

“Or...I don’t know. I had a million theories. Instead it was just you. Jeanne. Fixer.”

The sound of her given name from his mouth felt like a punch to the gut. She inhaled sharply as another question occurred to her. She swallowed hard, barely able to form the words. “Did you go inside?” She tightened her arms around herself, fingers digging into skin to keep from shaking. “Did you see him?”

After a moment, Deacon nodded. His elbows rested on his knees, hat in his hands. At least he had the guts to look at her. She wanted to see his eyes, but the sharp lines around his mouth and the tightness of his shoulders, the frown between his brows told her enough.

“So, you knew. Names. Dates. Everything? I need to know, Deacon. I can’t—I can’t work with you if I know you’re holding my own life over my head.”

He shook his head. “Fix...Fixer, this is... I’m not holding anything over you. I—”

“You saw him. You _saw_ my dead husband. You—”

“You and Shaun were missing from the vault. I had nothing on you except that you ditched your vault suit, which is how I knew someone came out. I knew he was a journalist. I saw his degree. I met Codsworth. I don’t know if he’ll recognize me.”

“That’s why you wandered off today.”

“Couldn’t take the risk. I wanted you to hear all this from me.”

“You waited this long, you’re only telling me because he might have spilled—”

“ _No_ ,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to. I needed you to see this place. I needed—”

“What about what I needed?”

He had no answer to that. Honestly, she didn’t either. She needed to be back, 210 years in the past. She needed the world not to end. To have ended. She needed to know what else he knew.

“What else do you know?”

“You used a different name—”

That nearly doubled her over. Sophie Deckard. Sophie. Made of ticky-tack. A safe name, a new name to hide her. Make her a new person. New birthday. New place of birth. Not Jeanne.

“Don’t say it,” she snapped. “Don’t.”

He nodded, brows twitching in understanding. “Yeah, of course.”

“So you knew. About Nate, and me and…” She started to shiver, thinking about the vault and the cold, that someone knew. Deacon been there, witnessed so much. It made things seem a little too real. “And you just pretend like you had no idea.”

“I wasn’t—I couldn’t bring it up. Not until I was sure of you.”

“And when was that?”

“After the Glowing Sea.”

“And then after? Why not then?”

“And then I—” He faltered and it was strange to see Deacon of all people at a loss for words. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Pretty inevitable,” she said.

“Really, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Forest noises filled the silence between them, the creaking of branches and the rustle of wind in the leaves, hissing through the grass.

“He’s still in there,” she said. The reality of it hit her like a wall, and suddenly nothing Deacon had confessed really mattered. She was a monster anyway, leaving him up there like that.

_Nate...she’d never deserved him. Coward, running away. Should have died in Toronto. Should have died in the vault. Should have been him out here, arguing with Deacon. He’d forgive Deacon, repair the damage between them for Shaun’s sake, and because it was his nature._

_Not...Nate..._

“What are you going to do?” Deacon didn’t sound like himself anymore. Less of a drawl, more like he was from here. Not quite Bostonian, but East coast. Non-regional. That stupid West Coast accent really was an act.

Her eyes brimmed with tears and she blinked them back, hard. Her knees turned to jelly, swaying and she managed to lower herself to the ground without collapsing.

“I—” God, why hadn’t she even asked herself that question? A quiet sob broke free, and then her shoulders shook and the tears broke free, burning hot trails down her face as she buried her head in her arms.

“Fix...jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s—” she choked on another sob, utter mortification burning in her cheeks. “It’s not you— _tabarnak de chaise de osti de maudit!_ ” She slammed a fist into the ground beside her, finding the earth loamy and unsatisfyingly soft. Her fingers dragged through the dirt, feeling the wet and damp, shivering at the cold.

_Cold...vault...Nate, alone..._

“You’re shaking,” said Deacon.

Was she? She felt numb tension shoot up her arms, and...why yes, she was. Now that she felt it, the trembling rattled her teeth. She tried to get another gasp of air—

“Hey, hey,” he said, and suddenly he sounded like Deacon again, gentle, half way to charming her into a smile. She heard him move, felt him sit on the ground next to her, but she kept one arm stubbornly locked around her knees, fingers of her other hand buried in the dirt. She couldn’t move if she’d tried.

“You gotta breathe,” he said, and she tried to inhale and found that she couldn’t. Sobs choked her, each one tearing her throat, and then she felt a hand on her back and she went completely still, holding her breath.

“Easy,” he said. “Easy, easy.” His hand moved in a slow circle and she choked another sob and then managed a gasp. Then another. And another.

Hyperventilation. Acute panic. That was all it was. She’d be okay. She’d either ride through it or pass out. It happened.

“I—”

“Breathe. You know about pulma-racks-a-whatsits. I know about panic attacks.”

 _Pneumothorax,_ she wanted to correct, but it was hard to get much out between each shallow, rapid breath. She sat stiff as a board, staring at the ground and let her body shake as her mind drifted through it.

_While unpleasant, acute panic is non life threatening._

_...even if I feel like I’m dying._

She managed a deeper breath, shuddering, and then another.

“That’s it,” Deacon said, his hand rubbing slow, wide circles along her back. “Bottle up any more of that tension of yours and you could sell it. Might be a good way to make caps on the side.”

She managed a hiccoughing laugh and slowly the world began to reshape itself. Deacon kept rubbing her back as her her limbs went to jelly. Her head sagged, eyes squeezing shut and she let herself tip sideways, only half of her own will. Deacon raised his hand from her back let her lean against him, his arm slipping around her shoulders as she took another shuddering breath.

“Okay?” he said.

She made a miserable little sound and nodded against his chest as her breathing regulated, the rush of numbness that always followed a panic attack making her feel like a wrung-out washcloth. She gave up trying to stay upright and just leaned. It was nice. Not to have to hold herself up for a moment.

Deacon sat still, warm and steady against her and she relaxed into the sensation of human contact that wasn’t accidental. Mostly. The post-panic attack brain had a neat little way of overcompensating for panic by releasing a flood of endorphins and feel-good neurochemicals, making her feel floaty and unconcerned, bringing down her walls.

He might as well know everything. She could at least chose this part of herself to share.

“I’m not from Boston, you know.”

“I kinda figured, what with the French and all.”

“I’m from Quebec,” she said. “800 kilometers north of here. I’m French Canadian. Quebecois.”

“Ah,” he said. “I know Canada. That it existed. There’s rumors of treasure hidden in an underground city up there, you know. Mount Royal.”

That got her chuckling. It was good...good to hear that there were at least rumors. Underground city... it was probably the shitty underground mall complex that connected part of downtown Montréal. Foreigners always hyped it up.

“What's so funny?” She heard a smile in his voice.

“It’s pronounced _Mon-Roy-al_. Or Mun-tree-al if you’re an Anglo. Which you are.” She gave him a little nudge with her elbow and he laughed.

“ _Montréal._ ” He said it the French way, flawlessly. He was good. She should teach him.

“How did you end up here?”

What a question. She had a thousand answers to that question. “Do you know anything about Canadian Annexation?”

He hummed. “I’ve seen the phrase. Read some old-time papers from the 2070’s.”

“Propaganda.” She huffed a bitter little laugh and shifted away from him to get some air. Deacon let his arm drop and she tilted her head back to rest against the board behind them.

Where to start? She reached back into the memories of her life before Boston. Her army service? Working with CAAB in Alberta? Nearly dying in Toronto? What her life had been like before the war? Quebec. Her home. Nate, Shuan...Boston.

“The Resource Wars,” she said. “The world became too expensive to live in. Inflation. Exploitation. A handful of people had all the money. Oil was running out. Canada had some of the world’s last oil reserves. Massive old growth forests for lumber. The Americans invaded, took everything. They closed our borders, cut down the forests. Tore up the land to get the the oil. Displaced thousands. Millions, in the end. It took ten years, started slow, ended in blood. People died. I saw military police mow down protesters with assault rifles at riots. They raided refugee camps. Martial law in cities, complete ruin of rural communities. And the only thing that got past the borders and into American media was propaganda.

“Nate covered annexation in the later years. Documented the human rights violations going on there. He could never get anything published. One...one article. He was so proud. _War Never Changes._ Op-ed...ran in an indie paper in Boston that almost got him arrested at the border the month after we met.”

“How’d you meet?”

“He interviewed me. About the squats and camps I lived in and worked in. I was providing medical support. And other things. Resisting, smuggling people out of the city, or in. Wherever they needed to go. Nate and I kept...meeting. He was so...kind to me. Didn’t treat me like a victim.”

“You’re not a victim.” Deacon said it with conviction, a touch of ferocity she’d never heard from him before. “You’ve got that...what’s it. Old world nobility. Don’t make ‘em like you anymore.”

She scoffed at the word. “ _Nobility._ Thanks, but I don’t need a pedestal. I’ve done horrible things in the name of freedom. I was on more than a few blacklists.”

“Blacklists?” He glanced sideways at her, eyebrows climbing.

“I worked for an anti-annexation group. CAAB. Canadian Anti-Annexation Bloc. Radicals. Gun running, POW liberation. Sabotage...murder. Two assassinations. A bombing, once. I cleaned sometimes too, fixed crime scenes to point away from our agents or to implicate American soldiers and deserters, implying treason. Misdirection. I was a terrorist to them.”

Deacon huffed, his surprise turning into a frown. “I thought you were a medic.”

She laughed and it tasted bitter. “Before. When I was in the army. They were supposed to put me through medical school. Annexation...ruined everything.”

“So what happened? How did you end up here?”

“An American soldier I was working with...we called him X--" She took a studdering breath. Xavier. Dead, just like everyone else. "He saved my life. I got. Taken captive. X got me out. Prison break. Very dramatic... But...CAAB thought I was compromised. Put a burn notice on me. I talked them into leaving me alive if I left Alberta.

“I ran back east. I hadn't talked to my family in four years. Didn’t want to put them in danger. I stayed away. Northern Quebec had less riots than the south, and I heard from my sister from time to time. They were safe. I spent some time just wandering, trying to help where I could...practicing medicine again, keeping a low profile. Took care of...thugs. Exploitive people.

“I found myself in Toronto a few years later. I was essentially a refugee at that point. Found some people to work with there, tried to make a difference but there were such...terrible things happening. Extraju—” she stumbled over the word— “extrajudicial executions—”

She couldn’t breathe again, not when she felt like she was on her knees, staring down the barrel of that gun, the American MP dead eyed and ready squeeze the trigger on his .45. A shot cracked and he fell in a spray of blood and she ran away. It had been such chaos, she didn’t even know who’d killed the MP and saved her life. And then she’d run home and Nate came over when he heard about the riots, and she told him that they were going to have a baby.

“Hey,” Deacon said. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Some things are just—” He took a breath— “Too raw. You've been through...a hell of a lot.”

“I’m so tired…” she whispered. “I—Nate. My friends, family...all gone. My baby...”

Deacon sat in silence next to her, his hands folded in his lap but she felt him listening, no longer prompting her, just waiting. After a few moments the silence was too much, and she spoke again, words droning out and buzzing in her ears.

“Nate. He...we got married so I could emigrate. And because of Shaun. An accident. We didn’t want him born on the wrong side of the border. Nate had to leave the country, go back home. To Boston. It was getting too dangerous for him. They were hunting down journalists. Wanted me to come with him…Have our baby. 2076. I abandoned my country. Abandoned everyone suffering and moved here. Annexation was complete the next year. And then…”

She fell silent and Deacon said nothing. What could he say? 'And then the world ended? Sorry about that, that really sucks.' Literally everyone else had lost everything as well. Was her pain so acute it made everyone else’s less?

“Sometimes I think I used him. And Shaun. I never would have left if not for Shaun...” The panic started to rise again, that feeling of wrongness, that she’d made every mistake, that she’d never set it right, that she _owed_ so much...

Deacon’s next question cut through the crowed of voices in her head: “Did you love him? Nate?”

The question startled her. It was so personal. Something raw broke free as she thought about it, a brutal reality that burned down in her gut, as far from her heart as it could get. She’d been too broken and desperate to really love anyone, not the way she wanted to love, the way she thought it should be done. After Shaun was born she’d been on her way to healing, functioning again. He brought so much light into her life, and Nate had been so patient, so kind...

And Xavier. Friend and confidant. Himself, broken. Gave her a reason to be strong again. And they both  _knew._

“Nate? _Y'en aura pas de facile…_ ” she choked out, the words coming more easily in French. “It’s...complicated. Not as much as he deserved. He knew, though. He didn’t mind.”

“Did he love you?”

“Mmmhm.” More than anything, she wanted to say. Sweet, and kind, and careful. 

“Then you didn’t use him.”

The silence grew between them again and she took a deep breath.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For...telling me about this, and what you did. What you know. And...listening.” Her arm unlocked from around her legs and she stretched the out, knees aching.

“No problem, partner. Thank you for...not...going all stabby on me. For being sketchy. And stuff.”

_And stuff._

“Eh. You’re not so bad,” she said. “It's good to work with someone again. Last partner I had in CAAB... We got close. He was this Canadian guy who ended up in the American army somehow, and then betrayed them by working for me. He's the one who got me out of the American prison. We ended up in Sanctuary at the same time, years later. It was an attractive spot, because of the Vault." A twist of fate, really. And now Xavier was dead too. And his bitch fake wife. Sanctuary... it had been so complicated. 

She felt Deacon smile. "A prison break? That's some pretty high standards to live up to,” he said. 

“I definitely expect a daring rescue if it comes to that. I don't work with someone who's not ride or die enough to bust me out of jail." She glanced at him, found him smirking.

"Oh, don't doubt I wouldn't, for a minute," he said. 

She sniffed, feeling a little twist of affection in her gut at the thought that maybe he was serious. Maybe they were actually partners. She shook herself, sighed. "Anyway, we’ve got a job to do.”

“We do. We’ve got a relay to build, and a kid to find.”

“And an an organization of mad scientists to destroy. And a bunch of recon to do. Synths to rescue. The Brotherhood of Steel to sabotage. And we’ve got to find out who the Gunners are working for, how synths are getting sold into slavery… Planting MILAs for Tom. Keeping Mercer safe...”

She groaned and let her head fall back to thunk against the observation post. He knocked his foot against hers.

“You’re not doing it alone." An awkward silence lingered between them. And then Deacon perked up. "Hey, do you think we should have a code name?”

“Uh…”

Deacon barreled onward, his voice grew mysterious, or what sounded like an attempt at mystery.  _“Red Orchard_ …or _Code Violet..._ ”

“Sounds pretty deep-cover government conspiracy to me…”

“Ooh! _The Death Bunnies?_ Eh? That'll confuse 'em.”

Jeanne pressed her lips together to try and contain a laugh, but it betrayed her. Her eyes sank closed for a moment as she giggled, pressing a thumb to her temple and rubbing her forehead.

“Okay,” she managed after a moment. “Death Bunnies it is.”

Deacon grinned, and offered her a hand up.

~~~

Jeanne settled into her little room as night fell. She lit a lantern and paced the room, thinking. The anger and grief from her afternoon discussion with Deacon and the subsequent freakout faded into a dull, restless anxiety. She considered taking a walk, but she knew her feet would lead her to the Vault and she’d spend the night staring at the door, not brave enough to go in.

She could go find Codsworth, but he’d fuss, and talk about the past. Preston, maybe. But he’d ask her what was wrong, poke at her, and then she’d cry all over again. If she didn’t want to be alone, Deacon was her best bet, but she didn’t want to bother him so soon after they’d been so raw around each other. No need to make him feel any more burdened—

Someone knocked on the door and Jeanne jumped. She glanced down at her clothes, frowning. She wore an overlarge plaid shirt unbuttoned over a t-shirt that barely covered her midriff, belly, stretchmarks and all. She’d found a pair of shorts on her travels and wore those now too. She decided she didn’t care who it was at the door; this was the first time she’d felt safe not wearing armor since she getting out of the Vault and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

“Come in!”

It was Deacon.

“Hey,” he said, peering around the door was a little smile. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Intel?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Recreational.” He held up a book, and Jeanne’s eyes widened when she saw the title embossed on the flaking leather.

“You weren’t lying about _Le Côté de Guermantes?_ ”

“Nope. Huge Proust fan. I told you. His ramblings just... _get_ me. The way he just can’t seem to end a sentence...” He handed her the book. “Thought maybe you’d like to read something in your own language. Pass the time, you know?”

She stared at the book. _Marcel Proust._ Of all the stuffy European novelists, it had to be Proust. At least Hugo had a sense of humor and some perspective on women. But still...Jeanne smiled when she opened the delicate front page and read a few lines.

_Le pépiement matinal des oiseaux semblait insipide à Françoise..._

Birdsong, incipit rambling, dry as dust, and she already didn’t care about Françoise, but...

She looked up to find Deacon halfway out the door.

Something lurched in her chest at the thought of being alone. Being quiet. “I could read some, if you want. Out loud.”

He stopped at the door, peering at her, skeptically “Really?”

“ _Ouis, pourquoi pas?”_

“Yes. Why...not…:?” He cocked his head to the side, questioning as he sounded out the words.

She nodded. “ _Oui. Bon._ I’ll teach you some words.”

Jeanne lit another lantern and a few candles to read by, and they settled in. Deacon sat next to her on the bed so she could point out words and phrases. He asked endless questions, and Jeanne added a few words to his vocabulary every page. He was a quick study but a few pages he grew quiet and she read uninterrupted, her voice growing more steady with each page.

Damn, if Proust didn’t know how to end a sentence. She’d never seen so many semicolons in her life.

Still, the words flowed out of her, comfort of her first language wrapping around her like a blanket, like she was home, and safe, and knew just what to say. Every once in awhile she’d stop to explain what was happening in the story to Deacon, but he didn’t seem to mind just listening.

Admittedly, nothing much happened in the first ten pages, just endless description and observation, stream of consciousness.

Jeanne wasn't sure when Deacon stopped responding or when her words slowed to a mumble, but it must have been a while because there was a crick in her neck when she started from her half-sleep. The book lay open on her chest, and for the second time that day she found herself with her head on Deacon’s shoulder. She blinked a few times, still and quiet against him while his chest rose and fell in sleep, puzzling through the feeling of pleasant contentment warming her chest.

It was nice not to be alone here. She sat up slowly, closing the book and setting it aside. Deacon stirred as she slid across the bed to put the book on the nightstand.

"Shit...Proust really is that boring, huh?" He cleared his throat, making a little noise of relief as he stretched.

Jeanne hummed and glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes bleary with sleep. " _Je m'endors_ ," she mumbled, her words thick.

“Sleepy?”

“Mmmhm.”

She sat at the edge bed, mind drifting until Deacon started to get up and Jeanne swallowed hard. Her stomach sank as she thought of being alone here in the graveyard of her old town. It was perhaps slightly terrifying. Sort of unfathomable. She briefly considered not sleeping at all. But if she took a walk she’d end up at the vault and that was...not an option. Her mind strayed to the holotape in her bag, the one she couldn't listen to, and she skittered away from the thought. Company would be nice.

"Would you stay?" she asked. God, she sounded pathetic, the words falling wooden and heavy into the quiet room. She braced her hands against the mattress, staring at the little yellow flowers on the faded blanket. Deacon stopped and her eyes flicked up in time to catch him smile, one of his gentler ones.

"Sure," he said. "I can take the chair."

"I mean, here. Bed is fine. If you want. Just...it's hard to be here. To be alone here."

"You don't have to explain, Fix. I don’t mind," he said. "I was gonna go sleep on the ground with all the other nerds. We can’t all be cool kids like you, with private rooms and special privileges from the General.”

She managed a weak chuckle and he grinned at her.

“Wall side, or outside?" he asked.

She felt a flash of gratitude as she scooted over to the wall, falling back with a sigh. "Inside," she said, sliding under the blanket. "I'm not getting pushed off the bed again."

Deacon made a skeptical sound and settled beside her. "I should have warned you," he mumbled. "Notorious bed hog. No sucker-punching me in your sleep, though. Please."

“No promises,” she mumbled.

She rolled over and let herself relax through a few deep breaths. She felt him shift, maybe taking off his sunglasses. She didn’t check to see. He lay on his back and she moved over so hers rested against his side. Not too close, just enough to feel the comfort of another person's warmth. She didn’t care anymore that that person had ghosted her from the first. He was Deacon, and he had his reasons, and she knew now, somehow, that he had never intended to hurt her. Perhaps he’d even helped her. Even that he knew helped. Those sunglasses helped. She’d never seen an ounce of pity from him.

And now with the wall on one side and Deacon on the other, she could pretend she wasn't spending the night amid the bones of her old neighbors. She could pretend that her husband was still frozen in the vault, a half mile from where she now tried to sleep.

_When I find Shaun, Nate...I promise I'll put you to rest when I have him with me. And we can say goodbye together. Like a family._

“Hey,” Deacon said a while later. His back was to her now, and he shifted a bit, turning his head towards her. “You awake?”

“No,” she mumbled, half asleep, and he chuckled, his back shaking against hers. “What is it?”

It took him a moment to speak. He inhaled sharply, then sighed. "We're pals, right?"

The question caught her off guard. It was so  _innocent._ She laughed a little. She supposed... "Yeah, we're pals."

He sighed, quiet for a moment. Then—“I haven’t had a friend in a long time. I—uh...I just wanted you to know. You might be the only friend I’ve got.”

She was quiet for a moment, eyes fluttering open to stare at the wall. “What about Glory?”

“Glory? She’s...she’s good. But it’s hard to make friends in the Railroad. Work’s first. You can’t get attached. You don’t get enough time. But you make work...it’s fun. That’s what friends do, right? Fun. Sleepovers. Campfires. Uh...Mud masks? Mani pedis? Pillow fights...”

It was her turn to chuckle. “We don’t have pillows.” A pillow would be nice. A lump in her coat dug into her cheek, though the smell of warm leather was actually comforting.

“You’re no fun.”

“You just said I was fun.”

“You’ve just proven me wrong. Pillow fights are the pinnacle of fun friends.”

“I’m tempted to find a pillow so I can hit you with it.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Ugh,” she groaned.

They lapsed into silence for a while, and Jeanne started to drift off again, her eyes heavy and burning, her limbs leaden and her mind numb.

“Fix?”

“Mmm?”

“Five caps says Codsworth won’t recognize me.”

She grinned at the wall, laughing through a yawn. “Make it ten.”

“Oh, it’s on. And Fix?”

She groaned. “I’m going to revoke friend status if you don’t let me sleep.”

He chuckled again and she heard the smile in his voice. “‘Night.”

She sighed, pulling the blanket higher up her shoulder with a faint smile of her own. “Goodnight,” she sighed.

When she woke, Deacon was gone. Jeanne rolled over to find his spot still warm, and she sighed, closing her eyes against the morning light. At some point she remembered rolling over and curling against his back, seeking warmth. Later she had vague memories of him urging her awake, whispering her out of a nightmare, his hand on her back, rubbing slow circles until she fell asleep again.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there with her eyes half open, but it was long enough to start feeling lazy. She got up with a groan, feeling bleary as she stumbled around looking through her gear for a toothbrush, a washcloth, soap, some water. Basic hygiene attempted and a change of clothes later and Jeanne dragged herself out into the sunlight to find Sanctuary buzzing like like a contented hive. People worked here. Jeanne could feel the pulse of it as she wandered into the flow of people on the main drag.

Something smelled like breakfast. She followed the smell of meat and tatos, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

Half a dozen people sat around a cookfire, Preston, Sturges, and Deacon among them, their backs all to her. Marcy Long sat on the other side of the fire, chewing something and glaring at nothing in particular. Jeanne waved and Marcy glared at her, and suddenly all felt right with the world, and Jeanne smiled.

Codsworth buzzed around the fire, serving breakfast to anyone who stopped by.

"Please tell me there's coffee," she said to Preston’s and Deacon’s back.

Deacon craned his head around to grin at her. "The bear emerges from hibernation."

“Morning mum!” Codsworth chirped at her. “I’ve met your friend Deacon, and he’s been regaling me with the most wild tales of your adventures.”

“I bet,” she said, shooting Deacon a look. He rubbed two fingers together, and then pointed to himself. I win, he mouthed at her. The glare she gave in return could have peeled paint but he grinned.

Preston made space on the bench, and Jeanne sat on the end pointedly ignoring Deacon’s smirk. A moment later, Codsworth pushed a cup of hot grain coffee and a bowl of eggs, grainy tatos, and limp carrots with reconstituted radstag jerky into her hands. She ate quickly and drank the grain coffee slowly, savoring the roasted almost-right taste of it. Coffee was probably one of her most deeply felt of all the little pleasures of the old world. Coffee and music. Good music.

"What's a bear?" Preston asked.

Deacon waggled his eyebrows over his own mug of tea, probably gourd blossom. “A terribly grumpy creature. You see a bear and you best play dead.” He grinned at Jeanne and she countered with a flat eyed stare.

An hour later, Jeanne said goodbye to Codsworth and Preston. Sturges assured her there would be progress on the “generator” when she got back. Deacon and Jeanne headed south. They had a saferoute to clear and some recon to do.”

“What disguise where you in when Codsworth found you lurking?”

“Scavver,” he said. “The good old brown plaid.”

She shook her head, smiling. It was one of his better looks.

“I’ll just be sure not to wear my wig around him. You know he almost cut me in half that day?” He sounded much too pleased.

Jeanne chuckled. “That’s a boy, Codsworth. He’s always been very protective,” she said. “It was a very intense day for the poor bot. 200 years... Can you imagine? At least I got to sleep through most of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Oh gosh so many notes I want to leave at the end of this one.
> 
> Jeanne, baby, you’re killin’ me. I don’t know why I’m incapable of giving her nice things. Thanks for riding that emotional roller coaster with me, and fair warning: it continues on in the next few chapters. They are a real team now, though! I just wanna smoosh their little faces.
> 
> The American soldier Jeanne refers to is actually another Canadian OC who belongs to [ghostofshe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofshe/pseuds/ghostofshe). We're collaborating on a pre-war story about Canadian Annexation. For now you can read about Xavier the hot mess in "[Fire & Water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8285711/chapters/18981743)" and I'll be sure to link to the colab when we finish it! Jeanne backstory! Whoo! He didn't get a mention in this fic before cuz this was a recent development but they become BFFs. >_>
> 
> As for future updates… I’m so excited for the next few chapters! So excited I’m writing about three/four chapters ahead of where we’re at now. However, I’m getting laid off at the end of June *cue panicked screaming* and that’s going to throw a wrench into things for a while. Hopefully I’ll have summer work lined up soon, but that might also mean a move in the next few months. My life is a slight mess, so if updates slow down or stop for a while, bear with me. I’ll leave a note on the first page of the fic if I think there’s going to be a delay of a month or more.
> 
> EDIT: I got a job, it's cool! :D
> 
> Seriously though, thank you to everyone who’s reading, and especially to y’all who leave these wonderful comments speculating, squeeing, or just letting me know you’re enjoying the story. Comments are truly the fuel I need to keep going. So much love.


	16. Tin Cans, Desk Fans

Deacon

“There’s someone there,” Fixer said, peering over the low masonry wall towards the gloomy entrance to Malden Center. “Right in the alcove.”

“What are they doing?” asked Deacon. He leaned beside her, his head just below the wall.

Fixer squinted, frowning. “Smoking…” Then she barked a laugh. “It’s _Glory._ ”

Deacon peered over the wall as well, craning his neck to catch sight of silver hair and a big-ass gun. “Fancy that.” Glory wasn’t supposed to be on this run. The route to run their latest package to Goodneighbor was clogged with hostiles. It had come direct from Dez. If _Glory_ was here, then there were two scenarios: some wires got crosses along the way to assigning this mission, or it was actually going to be a tough one. Malden Center looked innocuous enough as creepy locations in the Commonwealth went, rust covered and decaying like everything else in the craptastic world, but looks were deceiving.

Still, Deacon didn’t like not knowing things.

Fixer put her fingers to her lips and whistled, the sound sharp and piercing in the early morning air.  The silver-haired figure’s head snapped around to lock on their position.

Fixer unfolded from her crouch and Deacon heard Glory bark a laugh. Deacon followed as Fixer hopped over the wall, schooling his features into his customary Deacon-at-HQ smirk.

“No shit,” Glory said when they got close, shifting her minigun to her hip and exuding an aura of prickly mole rat. “We got assigned to the same fuckin’ job?” She jerked her chin at Deacon next. “And you? I didn’t know you were doing cleanup runs now.” She gave Deacon one of her more sceptical looks. “Someone fucked up.”

Deacon gasped. “Rude,” he said. “I happen to be very good at tidying up. Dust bunnies, spilled milk, ferals, you name it. I clean it.”

Glory snorted at him and then apparently decided he was best left ignored.

She was so over the top. Deacon loved it. He was well aware that he had his own shticks, carefully cultivated over the years. But Glory... _Glory._ Deacon adored how earnestly _ridiculous_ Glory was. Her enormous gun, her swagger, her attitude problem _,_ her utter dedication to Synth Liberation… All admirable but so extreme Deacon sometimes felt like she should have her own superhero comic. Maybe a radio play, like those Silver Shroud ones… He chuckled at the thought of Glory teaming up with the Mistress of Mystery to overthrow the white-persian-cat-petting, moustachioed mastermind who had created synths to be slaves to his will...

“Happens sometimes,” Fixer said, meeting Glory’s snappy attitude with a shrug. The easy attitude surprised him, though come to think of it, Fixer was only ever really an asshole to people who pushed her buttons. Like him. _Heh_.

“Or maybe,” she continued, “they didn’t think you could handle the job on your own.” Ah, there it was. That sweet deadpan snark. Fixer’s eyes sparked mischief, betraying her otherwise flat tone.

“Oh god, you really buy into that compartmentalization crap,” Glory said, glancing at Deacon. “This job came down Griswold Safehouse for me. Yours came from the Goodneighbor side. Someone fucked up. But since we’re here, we doing this? I’ve wanted to see you in action.” Deacon didn’t miss the way she eyed Fixer, her mouth twisting into a smirk as she sized her up.

She grinned at Glory, that mischief finally breaking free. Fixer had been smiling more often since they left Sanctuary behind, like she’d left some weight back there that Deacon had only half realized she was carrying.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Fixer— _Jeanne_ was a complicated woman, and Deacon thought maybe she needed her own superhero serial.

 _Thanks,_ she’d said to him, _but I don’t need a pedestal._

But it was hard not to put her there.

Hard especially now that he knew where she’d come from. What hell she’d walked through. And it got him thinking about how maybe life before the war wasn’t all sunshine and bottle caps the way the mags and the billboards made it out to be. He knew that, of course. He’d read enough to know that people were cruel and violent before the bombs and that the bombs hadn’t changed much really, except ruined the whole world. People will still people. They just knew less, and had less, but cared just about the same.

He glanced at Fixer, a little mix of pride and guilt making his gut lurch. That funny feeling kept pinching at him every so often since their little talk in Sanctuary, and the surprising intimacy afterwards. It was a bit shocking, really, to have her ask for him to stay after all the bullshit he’d confessed to, but he wasn’t complaining, even if being read out loud to had thrown him. He used to read out loud to Barb, used to—He didn’t...it put him off balance. He didn’t like feeling off balance, but since coming clean about his status as grade-A creep seemed to steady Fixer, he’d deal with it. And the confession had lifted a bit of a weight of his chest, like he could finally start being who he needed to be around her. And that was, apparently, a friend.  

Friend. _Ugh._

They crept into Malden Center, the station rusted out and covered in 200 years of decaying detritus. The air smelled like ozone and rot, and the dead escalators creaked under them as they descended into the mouth of the beast. Deacon’s hackles rose when the first corpse greeted them—a raider slumped over the bottom of the escalator platform.

They found another one at the turnstiles.

“Damn it,” Glory muttered. “It’s synths. Has to be. Look.” She pointed at the cauterized wounds on the raiders.

“Gunners?” Fixer supplied. “The other one had the same lesions,” She dropped to one knee to loot the corpse and look over the energy burns.

Deacon pushed forward into the subway. “Wouldn’t be Gunners, or we’d already be playing cops and robbers with live ammo.” He glanced around, getting nervous as they stalled for Fixer to continue her looting. “Anytime you’re done playing with corpses, I’m ready to get on with it,” he called back, and Fixer scoffed as she pocketed a handful of caps and a stimpack.

“Are you steady fighting synths?” Fixer asked Glory as they crept deeper into the station. “I thought you wouldn’t harm any generation of synth.”

Glory sighed, and Deacon glanced back to see her frowning. “I hate it, but I’ll do it if I have to,” she said. “Saferoutes come first, and sometimes the Institute bastards throw their foot soldiers at us. I’ll do it if I have to—”

Five creeping steps later, Deacon heard the tell-tale sound of a Gen 1 beep out it’s detection sensor routine. He froze, but Glory brushed past him, preceded by her minigun.

Deacon took cover, as much from the synths that lurched around the corner as from the spray-n-pray of Glory’s bullets. He pulled out his pistol and glanced at Fixer. She crouched in the shelter of the doorway opposite him and they took turns providing covering fire, taking out synths that tried to flank Glory as she barreled her way into the center of the room. Sixty seconds later, the room fell silent save for the hiss and crackle of dismantled circuits. Glory stood at the epicenter of a pile of Gen 1’s, looking around at the damage.

“I hate this,” she said, “but holy shit. Nice job.”

They pushed deeper into the old transit station, stepping over dead raiders and heaps of garbage. Deacon liked the underground, found the cool air and closed spaces comforting. Open ground was harder to control, and there were just _so_ many little nooks and crannies to disappear into around here.

Around each corner, behind each door there were more synths, but with Glory drawing the fire and he and Fixer picking off the stragglers, the work was almost too easy. They found a swarm of synths on the tracks, some of them taking long-range shots from inside train cars across the massive platform. Fixer swore under her breath and switched to her sniper rifle, pressing the short scope to her eye and taking aim across the tracks.

“I always liked trains,” Deacon mused over the sound of gunfire, ducking a bright beam of red. It sailed over his head and thrummed into the wall behind him. “ _Choo-chooo!_ That’s the sound they made, right?”

Fixer snorted as she took aim, but her reply was delayed as she held her breath and fired. She watched through the scope a moment and then pulled her eye away, making a satisfied huff as her target fell.

“That is indeed the sound they made,” she said, releasing her spent cartridges and unhurriedly reloading new rounds. “The great railroads, built on the backs of black slaves and Chinese immigrants forced into in wage slavery. _Choo-choo_ is the sound of progress at the price of human decency.”

Deacon drank in the ancient history lesson with an eagerness he didn’t show on his face, tempered by his amusement at Fixer’s indignant ranting.

“Not to mention all the buffalo, the wild horses killed, and indigenous peoples’ sovereignty. Land stolen, people displaced...” she trailed off to take another shot.

Deacon suppressed a little smile, bittersweet as he remembered what she’d told him of Canadian annexation she’d told him when they’d sat in the observation stand above Sanctuary. She was so—

“What the _hell_ are you two talking about? We’ve got work to do!” Glory called back at them.

“What’s the matter Glory, can’t chew gum and fire a gun at the same time?” Deacon hollered to her, reloading his handgun with a smirk.

“Deacon!”  

He looked up at Fixer’s warning cry to find a synth nearly on top of him. Deacon scrambled to get the gun loaded but the cartridge slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor as he backed away.  

“Uh…shit...” he said, staring at the useless gun. He found himself at a loss for a split second then he looked up at the synth and hurled the empty 10mm at its head, staggering it long enough for him to scramble further backwards. And then he tripped over something—a raider corpse. He landed hard on his ass and scrambled for anything to use as another weapon; a grenade, another gun, a severed arm...he touched something cold and smooth, made of metal and he seized it. Tire iron. He swung the bar low and hard at the synth’s legs and it stumbled. Deacon found his feet a moment later and swung again, the tire iron tearing into the synth’s middle, sending vital components flying.

“I so prefer a _gun_ ,” he grunted, but the bar felt right in his hands even as he said the words. The synth collapsed, but another closed in on him. He heard a crack of gunfire aimed at the synth bearing down on him, but Fixer was too close with her long range rifle and the shot went wide, a ricochet pinging behind him. He heard her swear.

The synth raised its pistol and Deacon swung the bar at its head with what might be categorized as a battle cry. He watched in fascination as the head departed from the synths body and sailed away, clattering to the floor to roll a few feet until it dropped from the platform and onto the tracks below.

Someone called _clear!_ and Deacon stood stock still, clutching the tire iron, breathing hard. The weight of it felt right in his hands and a thrill of power rushed through him. He choked back a groan of revulsion, but his hands tightened on the tire iron, his body reluctant to let go.

There was no blood this time, just metal on metal. No heady impact of wood on meat, no resulting pulp or blinding bloodlust that had scared the everloving shit out of him all those years ago. Vengeance had done nothing to ease the utter desolation of her loss...just made the pain worse, more raw, made him _more_ at fault...

He looked up from the synth to see Fixer staring at him, mouth slightly open, brows raised. Deacon might have called the look on her face impressed if he didn’t know her better.

“That was...something,” she said. “I thought you prefered a gun.”

His mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile but he knew he felt pale and shaken.

“Preference and skill are two different things, friend-o,” he said, trying to put the swagger into his voice he didn’t feel.

“Like chewing bubble gum and shooting a gun?” Glory tossed over her shoulder. “Might need some practice there, _pal._ ”

The banter continued as they pushed deeper into the station, clearing the tracks and train cars. Deacon held onto his tire iron, feeling oddly attached to the damn thing even as it made his skin crawl.

Funny how memory stuck like burrs, even years after. _However_ many years after. It didn’t really matter anyway. No one was counting, least of all him.

Glory ripped apart the next room in minigun fire and Fixer fell back, Deliverer now in her hand. Smart, for close quarters, after almost _shooting_ him with her goddamn rifle. She didn’t say anything, just stuck closer than usual, Deacon swinging his new friend into oncoming synths, Fixer covering his back or taking oncoming synths out over his shoulder. She moved smooth as...some kind of fabric he’d only read about in books. Fabric that didn’t exist anymore. Silk. Satin. Something like that.

The fight lurched to an end when Deacon smashed the last synth into a crumpled ruin. He and Fixer stood in silence for a long moment, back to back. He could hear her breathing hard, and his own heart pounded in his ears. His fingers ached from their grip around the tire iron and he forced them to open. The makeshift weapon clattered to the ground and it broke the seeming spell cast on the room.

“And the packages are safe for delivery again,” Glory said. “And holy shit.” Glory put her minigun down with a thunk. “I’m gonna admit it, you two are bad _ass._ I don’t know how you do it with a stick and a peashooter.”

Fixer looked up with a ragged grin, waving her gun vaguely. “Spray-and-pray might be satisfying, but precision beats it any day.”  

“That little thing? Wasn’t that Tommy’s gun?”

Deacon nodded. “Sure was. I think he’d be happy to know it was in such capable hands.”

Glory gave him a _look_ , hard and searching. Lately she’d started looking at him like he’d grown another head, but now it seemed she was trying to figure out how it had gotten there in the first place.

Fixer shoved Deliverer back into the holster on her thigh and hissed, holding her arm away from her body with a grimace. “ _Tabernac_!” She unbuttoned the wide cuff of her duster and pulled her sleeve back to reveal a cauterizing entry wound in her arm, surrounded by an oozing burn.

“Oof,” Deacon said, shuddering. He forced himself not to avert his eyes as Fixer dug through her bag for that glorious medkit of hers. Deacon could admit that he was slightly in awe of that medkit, and the things Fixer could do with a bit of tubing and a needle. Field medicine usually involved a stimpack and some muttered prayers, and if the damage was too great, some words said over the dead and dying. Like he should have been dead. Holes in the chest never ended well.

“I need to take care of this. Anyone else hurt?”

Deacon did a quick body scan and found nothing of note besides some mild burns of his own, and Glory scoffed.

“Fit as a fiddle boss,” Deacon said, watching her flush the wound with water, wincing in sympathy as she hissed and flexed her hand. Deacon  

“I fucking hate stims,” she grumbled, stabbing herself in the meat of her arm with a shaking hand, hissing.

“Better than having a hole in your arm deep enough to see bone,” Deacon said.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said, starting to bandage her arm with a clean roll of fabric she must have made out of an old shirt. “Give me a hand, finger here.”

Deacon replaced her fingers with his own the end of the bandage and she wrapped the wound loosely. “Tie it off,” she said, and he fumbled with the bandage, tucking in the edges. Fixer took a shuddering breath as she took her arm back and doused the bandage in water.

“Thanks,” she said, and then switched hard to business. “We need to collect scrap for the Relay,” she said. “Look for copper, circuitry, steel, gold. The synths should have plenty of each but this thing is going to require a lot more than what’s here. We’ll take everything we can carry.”

Glory nodded and Deacon groaned. Scavenging was only fun when there was good shit to find in fun and exotic locations—like hospitals or weird factories. Component parts bored the hell out of him. They split up, and Deacon started making a little pile of scrap before his wandering brought him to the same room as Fixer. He leaned against the door, kicking one leg over the other as he watched her methodically strip of anything she deemed even slightly useful, grinning when she spotted a real prize among all the garbage.

“And the mighty hunter spots her prey…” he said. “An unassuming desk fan sits atop its shelf, unaware of the imminent danger.”

Fixer shot him a dirty look as went up on her toes, wobbling a little, and still came up short. The desk fan sat inches from her fingers, and she stretched, leaning on the counter. She still couldn’t reach.

“But is the fan too far out of reach?” he whispered, lowering his voice and taking a step into the room. “To what lengths will the mighty garbage hunter go to claim her seemingly insignificant prize?”

She apparently decided to ignore him and started to boost herself up on the counter.

“Oh...watch. It looks like she’ll climb just about anything—” Deacon stepped up behind her and reached over her head, grabbing the fan. She spun, her nose almost in his chest and he backed away a little, holding the prize up.

“Thanks,” she said reaching out to take it, but Deacon backed away, grinning as he held the fan up and out of her reach.

“Ah, but what’s this? _Competition._ Another seeks her quarry.”

“Deacon!” The way she said his name, completely exasperated sent a wave of satisfaction through him. She advanced on him, looking murderous. He shook his head, grinning and she lunged for his arm and missed.

“I dunno why you’re so obsessed with these things,” he said, breaking character.

“The _screws_ Deacon. _Crisse_ …”

He grinned suggestively at her and chuckled as she she jumped for the fan, but he just held it higher, backing away until he bumped into the counter behind, still laughing.

She jumped again, latching onto his wrist to try and drag it down to her level, but he just folded her into a one armed hug, her back against his chest, and switched the fan to his other hand. Fixer strained against his arm, taking a swipe for the fan. She overbalanced and Deacon shifted his hip so she pitched forward and her feet left the floor.

“Ugh. Put me down!” He heard a laugh in her voice through the exasperation as she kicked, still trying to get to the fan and Deacon was tempted to boost her up on the counter and make a run for it when he heard someone clear their throat from behind them.

“Seriously?” Glory peered around the doorway with raised eyebrows. “What is this, a playground?”

Deacon dropped Fixer and she stumbled away, jerking the front of her coat straight with what looked like a mock glare. Deacon offered Fixer the fan and dropped his voice back into his narrator’s whisper. “After a brief tussle for dominance over the fan, the hunter emerges victorious, her prize in hand.”

Fixer jerked the fan from his grip and stared flatly at him for a moment. He tried to keep a straight face, he really did, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

“What the _hell_ are you talking about?” Glory snapped.

Fixer’s flat stare broke and she snorted a laugh, glancing at Glory and then dissolving into a fit of silent giggles. She inhaled sharply and then huffed a breath. Deacon laughed too, more of an amused chuckle, and Glory put her hands on her hips.

“How do you even _know_?” Fixer asked as she hauled her junk out into the main room.

“Know what?” Glory asked, tailing her. Deacon followed.

“Nature documentaries,” Fixer said, waving her hand. “That narration. Priceless.”

Deacon wiggled his fingers at her when she glanced back. “Leave a little mystery in your life, Fix,” he said. _Besides, I don’t share my stash of holovids with just anyone. Or literally_ anyone.

“Honestly, I swear you both speak a different language sometimes.”

Fixer dissolved into laughter again. “ _Mais je parle une langue différente_.” She kept going in french for a moment but lost the thread of meaning. Still, he caught a few words he knew. His name, for one. A few swears.

Glory now stared at Fixer as if _she_ had two heads.

“So,” Fixer said, surveying her pile of garbage they’d collected in the middle of the room, dropping the desk fan on top. “Help me bring this to the closest settlement, and I’ll make lunch.” She glanced at her pip boy and frowned.

“Resorting to bribes now, huh?” Deacon said, but he knelt to help pack up.

“Taffington Boathouse is up and running now, according to Preston.”

Glory watched them both with what Deacon thought might be the most confused expression he’d ever seen grace her face, and he winked up at her.

“You’re seriously taking all this garbage?” she said.

“God, what _is_ it with you wastelanders? I pick up a few tin cans and you act like I’m bathing in a toxic dump site.”

“I’m _not_ a wastelander, vaultie” Glory said, vehement. “I’m a synth.”

“Then drop the attitude about junk hauling and help me,” Fixer snapped back at her.

~~~

The three of them slogged their way south, burdened by a load of junk each, and made to the little boathouse settlement that seemed to have spring up overnight as the sun reached its zenith. More and more of these Minutemen settlements were coming to life all over the Commonwealth, and Deacon felt a mix of trepidation and interest in how this new faction might shift paradigms of power. Change wasn’t always a bad thing, but he’d seen enough ebb and flow of power over the years to know that even good things didn’t last. And last he’d checked, the Minutemen weren’t exactly the benevolent force everyone believed them to be. Everyone had an agenda. And no one liked synths.

They dropped off the junk and Fixer left them to speak quietly with one of the settlers.

“She’s weird,” Glory said as she and Deacon explored the settlement together.

Deacon shrugged. “What can you expect from a vault dweller? All that time underground addles the brain.”

“She’s from the Capitol Wasteland?”

“I never said that.”

Glory frowned at him. “You’ve heavily implied it.”

Deacon raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a shug, peering into the little boathouse. It was a tidy little settlement, despite the persistent bug problem.

“I dunno how she puts up with you,” Glory said. “The lying…”

“She’s a human lie detector,” Deacon said, grinning. “It’s infuriating.”

“Oh?” Glory said. They walked along the dock now, spotting Fixer getting set up at a stove down by the workshop, apparently making lunch.

“Yeah,” Deacon said. “I’ll show you. Just don’t try and join in, though. Watch and listen. You’re a terrible liar.”

They joined Fixer on the dock when lunch was ready. Glory leaned against a pilon and Deacon sat on a crate, but Fixer handed them each a bowl of meat, gourd, and tatos. They all settled on the edge of the dock.

“How’s the arm?” Deacon asked she settled.

“It’s fine,” she said, peering at the bandage, now pink with blood and whatever might be oozing. Decon wished suddenly he hadn’t asked right before lunch. “It might scar, but what’s one more.” Her smile was rueful, but she shrugged.

“Well, if you ever need to amputate, it won’t be a big dea. There’s plenty of gen 1 arms you could replace it with. That would be sweet.”

Fixer rolled her eyes and set her food aside.

“I’ll pass, thanks. I’m rather attached to all of my limbs.” She pulled off her boots and socks, then rolled up the legs of her jeans. Deacon watched from the corner of his eye, noting thick, muscular calves and small, delicate feet. She flexed her toes, sighing before dipping them into the water with a little shiver.

“Ew, Fixer!” Glory stared at her in horror.

“Going for a swim?” Deacon asked, shuddering. “Come on in, the water’s deadly!”

Fix looked up with a bemused expression, submerging her legs almost up to where her pants were cuffed. “What?”

“You can’t just...put your feet in the...water like that,” Glory said, horrified.

Fixer shrugged. “Why not? I took Rad-X.”

“Yeah but...who knows what else is…” Glory shuddered. “Is in there. Rads is the least of your worries. Slime. Fish. With teeth...Mirelurk hatchlings? God...”

Fixer peered into the bright clear water below and then shrugged. “Seems clean enough to me. I’ll risk it. My feet are killing me. And I miss swimming...” She trailed off, sighing. Glory frowned at her and they all lapsed into silence, finishing lunch.

“These Minutemen are really turning into something, huh?” Deacon said after a while. “Good leadership in General Garvey. And I’ve got an eye for leadership.”

Fixer hummed, taking a bite of squash. Glory gave him a narrow-eyed what-are-you-up-to look.

“Listen, I gotta come clean,” Deacon said. “Thing is, there’s stuff about the Railroad you should know. Stuff about me.” Fixer looked up and gave him an eerily similar look to the one Glory had just shot his way. “Desdemona...she looks like the the boss lady. She calls the opps, gives us the pep talks. She’s got the fun maps and those little red strings connecting all the dots. But it’s just for show.”

Fixer’s feet went still in the water and she stared at him for a moment, shaking her head. “Go on,” she said with a tight little smirk. “This will be a good one.” She looked almost fond as she gazed at him, _indulgent._

“Truth is,” he said—damn but it was never good to start a lie with ‘truth is’— “I’m the leader of the Railroad. Founded it. Well, me and John D, and Wyatt. That was what… seventy, eighty years ago?”

Fixer sat up and faced him pulling one damp foot from the water and tucking it under her thigh. The other one swung back and forth in the current.

Glory shook her head from behind Fixer and Deacon kept his face perfectly passive.

“But you said you were—” Fixer started.

“Hey,” he said, cutting her off. Glory didn’t need to know anything he’d told Fix in private about his age, or his timeline. Lack of… “People _think_ I get these face swaps to keep the Insitute off my back, but really I’m just vain. Takes a lot of work to keep this mug handsome.” He rubbed at the scruff on his cheek.

“Bullshit,” Fixer said. “Absolute bullshit. You’ve been doing—” she waved her hand like a butterfly catching a breeze— “ _whatever_ it is you do for a long time, but there’s no way you’re currently leading the Railroad.”

Deacon sniffed at her. “Your doubt in my abilities wounds me, Fixer,” he said. “How do you _know_? There’s no proof either way.”

“Ah,” she said, her narrow-eyed gleam sparking at him. “But if it were _true_ , there’s no way in hell you would tell me, yeah?”

Deacon tilted his head to the side, laughing. Clever girl. Perceptive to a fault. He caught Glory’s eye over Fixer’s shoulder and waggled his eyebrows at her. Glory shook her head and picked at a sliver of wood on the dock.

“Damn, Fix. Human lie detector,” he said. “Ya got me. Just a humble spy.”

“Maybe if you were better at lying…” she said.

He flashed her a wicked grin. “Maybe if you were more trusting…”

“Maybe…” Fixer kicked her foot—the one still in the river—and an arc of water arced into the air and splashed him in the chest and face, the cold water shocking.

“Fix! Jesus—”

She laughed as he wiped his face, glasses blurry. He turned his head away and snached them off his face, rubbing the lenses dry with a part of his shirt that wasn’t speckled with water before jamming them back on his head, scowling. Glory snickerd.

“Ugh, now I’m damp. And my hair’s wet.” He patted his wig, frowning.

“Maybe foot bathing isn’t so bad,” Glory said. “God knows that thing needs a wash.”

Deacon sniffed. He happened to take very good care of his wig.

“I’m still stuck on this whole, ‘I miss swimming’ thing,” Glory said. “Who _swims?_ ”

“What else do you miss?” Deacon asked, head tilting as he watched her. He couldn’t imagine how hard it was to wake up in a world where pretty much everything but people being shitty to each other had been lost.

Fixer sighed, letting her head sink back against the pilon she leaned against, frowning as she thought. “I miss fresh fruit. Cherries. Apples.” she said. “ _Poutine…_ ”

“Poo-what?” Deacon said, incredulous. “That sounds...dirty. And not in the fun way.”

Fixer snorted. “ _Poutine_. It’s sinful. Potato strips fried in oil, smothered in brown gravy, with fresh cheese curds on top…”

“I’m sorry, _what_ kind of tato?” Glory asked.

“Pa-ta-to.” Fixer glanced at Deacon. “ _Pomme de terre._ It’s what...a tato used to be before it was also a tomato. _Un tomat._ ”

He said the words out loud, grinning at Glory as he absorbed the French lesson.

“Poutine is— _was_ Quebec’s favorite dish. Collectively. It was almost spiritual.” She sighed wistfully, and smiled a little. “Of all the things…”

“What else,” Deacon urged.

She laughed. “Oh...so many things. Music. _Good_ music. If I have to here _Uranium Fever_ one more time I’m going to break into DCR, find that tape, and burn it.”

“Aw, I like that one. Reminds me of being prospector in the West, way back.”

“Mmmmhmm,” she said, shooting him a smirk. “Gold-digger, yeah?”

“Nah,” Deacon said. “The gold-diggers were after  _ me. _ I struck it rich when I found a whole mountain of bots. Good money for old world gizmos out West, not like here. C'mon, what else?”   


Fixer’s eyes grew dreamy and far away. “Trashy television. Classic movies. Long car rides. Canadian soda. Have either of you seen a bottle of soda called Spruce Goose?”

Deacon couldn’t quite contain his glee at hearing all this pre-war nonsense pouring out of her. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Made of real goose, right?”

“Ugh, no,” she said. “It tasted like pine trees.”

“You had a soda that tasted like trees?”

“Sunset Sas- sapsp-saspr... Fuck. Sarsaparilla—” She pronounced the word carefully, her accent getting in the way—“is a plant.”

“I’m missing something,” said Glory, utterly flat.

“Yeah, you are.” Fixer paused, staring into the ripple and shine of water, kicking her foot a little to make eddies flow around her leg. “I was born before the war.”

Deacon managed to swallow the strangled sound of surprise, slamming his mouth shut like it hung a loose hinge. She hadn’t told _anyone_ besides Nick and Piper she was pre-war. She hadn’t even told _him,_ technically because he was a creep and he’d known even before he met her. He went still, waiting for her to go on like she might startle like a radstag if he brought himself to her attention.

Glory burst out laughing. “Oh my god. You two are literally the worst liars I’ve ever—”

Fixer shook her head, shoulders straightening. “It’s true.”

“You’re from a vault, right?” Glory studied Fixer intently, like she was noticing little things about her for the first time.

“I’m from Vault 111. Cryogenically frozen. The only survivor. Besides my son, I hope... The Institute has him.”

Realization dawned on Glory, her deep brown eyes going wide.

Fixer sighed.“To me, the war was…” Fixer’s eyes rolled skyward as she muttered in french under her breath… “Two and a half months ago?”

Glory stared at her a little longer, cursing under her breath, perhaps trying to figure out if Fixer was really telling the truth. She glanced at Deacon and he shrugged. He would neither confirm or deny.

“That’s…”

“Believe it or not,” Fixer said, her foot resuming its slow kick in the water, making little eddies around her leg as it swung back and forth.

“Well,” Glory said slowly, “If it’s true...that explains why Deacon’s so obsessed with you. I thought he was acting weird, but he loves all that pre-war nonsense.”

Deacon chuckled, but his throat went tight. _Obsessed._ He’d admit a certain fascination with Fixer’s pre-war life, and a powerful admiration for who she was and all she’d been through. And all she’d done for the Railroad. And all she _would do_ for the Railroad. But obsessed? That was a bit rich.

He glanced at Fixer. “I _do_ collect antiques,” he said, his voice airry. “And you’re a 242 years old popsicle. What a find.”

“I don’t know who I want to splash more,” Fixer growled, her gaze swinging between the two of them.

Glory stood up and backed away, shaking her head. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “Do you have any idea how long it takes this coat to dry?”

“No, but I’d love to find—” Fixer dipped her hand into the freezing water— “out!”  She sent a spray of water in Glory’s direction and Glory dodged it with an indignant yelp it so the water splashed on the dock and on her boots instead of her coat. Deacon cackled and Glory huffed.

“Water monster,” she said, scowling.

Fixer laughed. Not her usual wry chuckle but delighted and unselfconscious in a way that reminded Deacon of nothing so much of a Fancy Lad Snack Cake, a little sweet. Definitely layered. Cake. Icing. Cake. Like the time he’d made her laugh in Goodneighbor, unable to resist the “stay rad” joke that had probably cost him his cover and made her clock him. And then nearly stab him. They had come a _long_ way.

Deacon smiled himself, swallowing a laugh of his own. Tried not to think about how weird it was to feel a little happy.

Glory’s mouth twisted, resisting her own smile. “I should really be off, anyway,” she said. “I’ve got a long list of things to do…” She trailed off. _Sanctuary. Molecular Relay. The downfall of the Institute and true synth liberation._

Fixer nodded and stood as well. “Ask for Preston Garvey. Sturges might get involved and they are probably going to figure out we’re building something more advanced than a generator. I think they’ll be cooperative but send a notice to the dead drop in concord if you need me to show up and play peacekeeper. Be safe, yeah?”

She offered her hand to Glory and they gripped arms for a moment and then Glory nodded curtly and turned to go.

“Stay rad!” Deacon called after her back. Glory turned and flipped him off, middle finger raised, her smile steeped in sarcasm.

Deacon laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this is getting so long and is so full of random nonsense. D:
> 
> Anyway, next up is a chapter I'm very excited for. For Reasons. Also it'll be a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.


	17. The Holo Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethical catch-22s and Goodneighbor shenanigans.

Remember us—if at all—not as lost  
Violent souls, but only  
As the hollow men  
The stuffed men.

- _The Hollow Men_ by T.S. Eliot

 

**Fixer**

Grief was a strange thing. Fixer knew the process too well, could almost ride it like one rode a stubborn, capricious horse. She rode as a child on her family’s farm. She knew how to move with spooks and starts, stuttering, stalling. The horse might move forward and then shy away from a shadow. Like Fixer shied away from Nate. The horse might move out from under her, to the side, and her body would follow half a breath behind, and then her stomach would catch up—a sickening lurch from fear of falling and a rush of relief when she stayed astride.

And sometimes grief was a dead fish she couldn’t get rid of. The stink became a constant reminder that she’d lost something, clinging to her, driving her mad as she tried to locate the the source. Memories stuffed in her brain, swimming round and round until the scales and fins sloughed off and she was left with nothing but brittle bones and a lingering stench.

And sometimes her grief was hot and hard, like a bull, stubborn, railing against a barbed inclosure, scenting for blood, for someone to _blame_. The bull would run if it could, as fast as it could, would trample anything in its path, past or present, in order to get to the source of the pain so it could gore it, make it stop. Kill it.

And sometimes mourning was soft, almost pleasant, like petting a deerskin hide. She’d rub at it one way and it would slide flat and silk-smooth through her fingers, until she dragged back against the grain to find the hairs rough and prickly.

Deerskin, like the one covering the back of her father’s armchair in the living room of their farmhouse. Jeannie loved to run her hands over it, back and forth. She couldn’t remember...sometimes she tried to remember what it was really like in that room, or riding horses, or working with papa in his workshop. Things that happened before she was grown. When she tried to remember it all seemed prickly and rubbed wrong. When she relaxed and let go, the memory became silky, like the right-way drag of her fingers down the deerskin. The other way, it didn’t feel real.

When she let go and made the memory silky, she _knew_ things, but couldn’t remember them. She knew papa had tanned the hide it himself, but she couldn’t remember his face.

Trauma. Cryogenic stasis deteriorated long-term memory, maybe? Probably. And she’d made herself forget so much so she wouldn’t put her her family in danger during her fight against Annexation. So she wouldn’t have to mourn them.

Maybe Amari could help. With Goodneighbor as their next stop, the thought was both tempting and terrifying.

Or maybe she should just let it go. If denial was riding a spooking horse, and depression was her fish-brain, if the bull was her anger, and the deer skin was bargaining…

She didn’t know what acceptance looked like, because she couldn’t get the skeletons out of her head, or stop running her fingers back and forth across the deerskin, or get off the horse.

Except that one time she’d fallen, and someone had actually been there to rub her back and remind her to breathe, and then let her get back up on the horse and go on her merry, grieving way.

~~~

"Ah, so many good memories in Goodneighbor,” Deacon said as they passed through the gate and got a nod from one of the watch. “Look!” He pointed to the spot between Daisy’s shop and Gun’s 'n Ammo. “There’s where I told you our first joke.”

Jeanne pulled off her helmet, the world shifting from rose-tinted to the normal, drab and dull shades of gray and brown. She strapped the helmet to her bag as she scanned the courtyard. It looked exactly the same as when she’d first been to Goodneighbor, and the times after. She was starting to learn the baseline of major strategic settlements like Diamond City, Bunker Hill and Goodneighbor itself, which meant she would be able to tell when something was _off._

To her eyes, everything seemed well. Which was to say _depressing._

Fixer waved toward the same spot Deacon had just pointed to. “And that’s when I knew I was getting stalked by a creepy drifter.”

Deacon shrugged. “And _juuust_ around the corner is where I got stabbed by an enraged vaultie."

“Almost stabbed,” she corrected him. “I pulled that punch.”

"Nicked the skin,” he said. “There was _blood_ —” She clicked her tongue at him— “Believe me,” he said. “I would have been _way_ more careful if I knew how fucking scary you actually were. And look at us now. We're pals, right? Hell, you saved my life last week. I'm gonna have to keep following you around until I can return the favor."

"Let’s hope you don't have to," she said. "I'm not sure how much faith I have in your triage skills."

He huffed, offended, and they rounded the corner past the Old State House.

“That that ex-Gunner friend I mentioned should be hanging around the Third Rail," Jeanne said. "We can get some intel out of him about that trafficking racket. And I could use a drink."

"Sounds like a plan, boss. We can stay the night here if need be. Rexford's always an option."

"The _only_ option."

"You forget the mattresses under the eaves there—"

A gravely voice cut across Deacon’s rambling. "Well, if it ain’t my favorite little scout."

Fixer’s head snapped around to find Hancock leaning against the door to his mayoral domain, smoking a cigarette. He waved and hopped off the steps of the Old State House to saunter towards them. His red coat accented the crumbling red brick around them, like he was an actor reveling in the glory of his set. Next to Hancock’s undead pirate look, Deacon's sunglasses-spy stick seemed slightly less ridiculous.

Hancock raised a non-existent eyebrow at Deacon. “And...teamin' up with...what’s the name you’re going by these days?”

“You can call me Deacon,” her partner said.

Hancock looked between the two of them. “It’s better havin’ MacCready at your back. He’s not liable to slip away when you least expect it. But it’s your funeral."

Deacon offered Hancock a cagey, sarcastic smile, and Hancock inclined his head. Something odd passed between them and Fixer’s eyes narrowed from amusement to suspicion as she watched the two of them sniff at each other like territorial alley toms.

“ _Crisse,_ _vous êtes_ _ben agrès_ _…”_ she muttered, and Deacon glanced at her with the edge of a crooked smile in no way meant for Hancock. Her mouth twisted in return, amused and vaguely pleased that he enjoyed French so much.

"Sorry, didn’t quite catch that?” Hancock said. “Speakin’ in code now?” She shrugged, offering a mysterious smile of her own, and Hancock held up his hands, chuckling. “Fine, fine,” he said. “What brings to t’ Goodneighbor?”

"Oh, you know. Taking in the sights and aromas of your fair city," Deacon said, waving airily.

"I got some tour guides if ya want a history lesson," Hancock drawled. “They know where all the choicest smells are.”

"Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Jeanne said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m fairly up on my history in this area." Deacon snarked a little laugh and Jeanne frowned at him. He shrugged.

“Yeah,” Hancock said, exhaling in a cloud of smoke. “The two of you know more than anyone ought’a. Been hearing you and _Deacon_ here are thick as thieves these days.” He spared another dark-eyed glance at Deacon and Jeanne wondered how much Hancock knew about the Railroad. Amari was a key element and she lived in the basement down the street. Synths came through here all the time. A man as powerful as Hancock...he had to know _something_.

“Why fix what ain’t broken, right pal?” Deacon said, elbowing her.

"Well, there's a drink on me at the Rail tonight if you want to swap some gossip." Hancock's eyes fixed on Jeanne.

“I would listen to Magnolia any night," she said, extracting herself from the conversation with a wave, backing up a step. Hancock winked at her, and she felt his eyes on her back as she and Deacon turned the corner.

“This way,” Deacon said, leading her down an alley. “Never know who’s watching in this town, even if Hancock’s always turned a blind eye to the Railroad’s business.”

_Hancock’s Railroad knowledge confirmed. Merci._

The back entrance brought them into the backstage of the Memory Den. Old timber creaked around them, the smell of dust thick in Fixer’s nose, making her sniff and swallow a sneeze. The old theater made her feel nostalgic for a moment. Its stillness didn’t seem out of place in the way the stillness of so many did, dead when they should be alive. Backstage was liminal, a place where people only passed through on their way onto or off of the stage. For the breath of a moment the world felt the same as it did before the bombs, like she could step into the Memory Den and find it full of an audience ready to see a show instead of memory loungers and drifters trapped in their pasts.

She and Deacon passed through now and found the world exactly as they’d left it: decaying in places that should be full of life, the smell of must and pavement after rain permeating everything, empty hallways covered in garbage.

Fixer rapped sharply on the closed door to Amari’s lab, eyes straight ahead as she repressed a little shudder at the memory of the and only time she’d been in this basement, when she’d taken that mind-scrambling walk through Kellogg’s bain.

She stepped back as the door opened and Amari peered at them before opening it a bit wider.  

“Thank god you are here,” Amari said. “Deacon… and who— _you?_ ” Amari’s eyes widened in recognition, looking Fixer over with a trace of shock.

Fixer shrugged. “Me,” she said.

Amari’s eyes flicked to Deacon and they narrowed at him in the same way Hancock’s had done just minutes before, and then she turned back to Fixer. “I’d have thought you had enough on your plate without—well, nevermind. What’s your callsign?”

“Fixer,” she said, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows in mild amusement. “Do you have a geiger counter?”

Amair’s eyes widened and she made a soft “ _o_ _h,_ ” looking Fixer over again with new eyes. “I see. Mine’s in the shop. Come in, come in. Is the route clear? Or do we have a new one?”

Fixer nodded and stepped inside Amari’s lab, Deacon shadowing her. “It’s clear…” Her eyes roam the distantly familiar room. A man—the synth, perhaps, or a heavy, sat on a couch. Medical equipment lay in trays on the counter and neatly labeled samples of organic and synthetic matter lined a shelf. Fixer glanced at the memory lounger she’d once laid in, falling through the memories of her husband’s killer, searching desperately for clues as to where she could find her son. The lounger yawned open and empty now as if waiting for the next person to swallow so it could continue to scramble minds with abandon—

The man shifted in the corner of her eye and she finally looked at him—he was sallow, deep shadows under his eyes, sandy, bedraggled hair sticking up at odd angles, his hands clasping and unclasping, his knee bouncing with anxiety...H2-22...

He studied them warily, his pale eyes concerned, brows drawn down into a frown, but Fixer’s heart jumped a little when she realized who Deacon, Glory, and herself had helped by clearing the station. A bright little spot of joy welled up in her chest.

“H2?” She beamed at him, taking a step forward. “Hi!” The warmth grew in her chest, touching her cheeks. For a moment she was back in her army days, during those sweet little moments when she re-met or heard news of former patients that had survived their injuries. A feeling she treasured for how rare it was: the satisfaction of saving a life mixed with utter pride in knowing how much someone had survived.

And then H2 looked at her, horrified. “Stay—Keep away from me!” His voice was rough, angry and he slid down the couch as far from her as he could get.

The joy died in her chest, burst with the same sensation of a the resounding bang of balloon getting popped with pin, replaced with a vacuum of confusion as she took a step back at the harshness in his voice. Something had happened to him, something wrong… She felt a sick lurch in her stomach and a rush of dizziness.

“I said keep away!” he shouted again. “The doc said I have some kinda illness, I blacked out, wound up here, but…”

“Okay,” Fixer said, holding up her hands. “You don’t...remember me?”

“What? No? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” H2 stared at her the way someone stared at an intimidating stranger, a mix of horror and disgust. “Back off lady. D’you wanna get sick too?”

From behind her, Amari cleared her throat and Fixer glanced back to see the doctor shake her head, the smallest of back and forths. Fixer swallowed hard looked back to the synth.

“I—okay,” she said through the lump in her throat. “Feel better soon, yeah?”

H2—the person that used to be H2-22 muttered a thanks and went back to clasping and unclasping his hands, knee bouncing as he waited for _whatever_ it was he seemed to be waiting for. News of the cleared safe route. A way out of the Commonwealth.

“So what do I tell our Heavy?” Amari asked in a stage whisper.

“Malden Center is clear,” she said. She looked at Deacon for a moment, who seemed to be watching her from the corner of his eye as he glanced around the room.

“What happened to him?” She stared at Amari, her frown deepening, her tone low and accusatory. Her eyes darted to the memory lounger she’d once occupied and then back.

“He’s ready to leave the Commonwealth,” Amari said but Fixer shook her head violently.

“He’s not there. He’s gone—”

Amari cut her off. “Upstairs. _Now._ ”

Jeanne stormed out of the room, hearing Amari promise the person who sat in H2’s skin that she’d be back in a moment.

“Fixer…” Deacon’s voice was low in warning as they reached the top of the creaking stairs, touched with concern. She turned to him with a violent shake of her head.

“Don’t—” she said. “Just…”

Amari came up the stairs and hurried them into a side room, easing the door shut behind her.

“You didn’t warn her?” Amari snapped at Deacon.

“Fixer, you already knew about this...” Deacon started. “That’s why we need the Memory Den—”

Fixer put her hands on her hips, face hot, temper savage. “Know _what_? That you murder synths?” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but it was too late.

He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face made her vitriol die. He looked as lost as she’d ever seen him, his already fair face drained of color, eyebrows drawn down behind his glasses, his mouth half open as if he’d lost his words—he was never at a loss for words.

Fixer swallowed. She’d said something wrong, felt unbearably cruel for a blinding second and she stepped forward.  "Deacon…” She breathed his name, reaching for him, head shaking like someone jerked back and forth on a string. He had to understand. “They erased him. He’s… _gone_.”

He licked his lips, nodding. No jokes. No deflection. She grabbed him by the forearms and his fingers convulsed, gripping her arms in turn, head bowed. His glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose and he looked over the rims at her, as if trying to beam his justifications for the Railroad murdering H2’s mind directly into her head. She searched his eyes—sad, haunted—and found nothing satisfying, just Deacon. She swallowed hard.

Amari cleared her throat and Fixer jumped, dropping Deacon’s arms. The doctor directed her words to Fixer with patience, like she was talking to a small but clever child and Fixer felt her temper bristle again.

“I appreciate your help with—” Amari waved her hand— “everything. And I know much of what you’ve been through...”

“You helped me once. Now I’m helping you. And whatever this _system_ is. It’s going to change. We’re going to find a better way.” Her jaw tightened as Amari opened her mouth and she shook her head again, feeling like a bobblehead, a broken record, a fury. “What’s the point of helping them escape if they don’t even get to keep themselves? You know what, Amari? Just… get him out of here. Somewhere safe.”

Silence stretched between them and Fixer felt vindicated that she had the final word. Her chin raised as she looked between them, and Amari dropped her eyes to the ground, studying the floor for a moment. Then she sighed, and pulled something from the pocket of her labcoat. Jeanne went stiff when she saw what it was: a rectangle of bright green plastic. A holotape.

“H2 spoke of you quite a bit,” Amari said. “He seemed quite fond of you. He… gave me this, to give to you.” She held out the tape and Jeanne took it, her fingers numb and clumsy.

One more holotape from a dead man she probably didn’t want to listen to.

Jeanne stared at it, frowning, feeling suddenly untethered. She nodded vaguely to Amair and sank down onto a nearby bench and popped the tape into her pip boy. She glanced up to give Amari a hard-eyed look as she hit play.

H2’s voice, so much softer than it had been downstairs, filled the room.

He didn’t want her to be sad. He wanted to be free. He would miss her, and Deacon. High Rise. Old Man Stockton… He didn’t want her to be sad.

He wanted to be free.

The tape clicked off and Jeanne dropped her head into her hands, the weight of the pip boy dragging on her arm like a brick. She heard the quiet creak of hinges and the click of a door closing, and then the bench creaked and she felt Deacon’s weight and warmth beside her.

"You can't just _erase_ a person,” she said through her hands, feeling tears prick her eyes. “He was… learning to cook. Eggs. He made me an… an omelet."

"You sicked one of those omelettes on me too, I recall." His words were tinged with amusement. "It was terrible. I'm still not convinced you weren't trying to poison me."

He startled a laugh out of her. "God, this is so stupid. Crying over _eggs._ " She sniffed. "He didn't know _anything_ ... He was becoming a _person_ and the Railroad just… replaced him. We killed him.” She looked up, right at Deacon and saw the muscles at his temples tighten and she understood why he wore those stupid sunglasses.

“I hate it too,” he said, his voice low and tight. “But it’s what he chose. They're the ones who decide if they get a new life or not. Glory was presented with that option and she chose to fight instead. Some decide they'll risk keeping their synth memories, and most… they opt for the memory wipe. Get a whole new reality. It’s for their protection. But it’s _also_ their decision."

“He’s someone else now,” she said. “Just… like that. And who gets to decide who he is now? Amari? _You?_ Does he get to pick his new memories like picking out curtains or does it come as a package deal?” Memory, that fickle thing. She'd cherry picked Kellogg's life right in this very building, the moments bleeding into her own memories until she couldn’t quite tell who was who. Not until she’d staggered back into her own body. “What am I without my mind? You kill a synth’s mind, and what is left left to protect? Their bodies? That’s it.”

She dropped her eyes to her hands and studied them for a moment. Dirty nails. More calloused than they had ever been. Ragged cuticles. Trembling. “They really are just packages.”

They sat in silence, stretching brittle and bitter, and Jeanne took a few deep breaths, digging her nails into her palms. The numb shock lifted in slow waves as she regulated her shaking and her horrified temper receded. Objectivity reassured it’s weight as she teetered back and forth on a tightrope over a yawning chasm of existential horror regarding the choices they had to make. Of _course_ it was how things were done. It was difficult to be an idealist when sticking hard to ideals didn’t protect people from reality. She’d done things in CAAB that would make the Railroad look like a bunch of adorable, dysfunctional saints by comparison.

But that didn’t make it _right._

H2-22 was one of the most gentle souls she had met in what felt like... centuries… and now he was just… someone else, just like that, with a snap of the fingers, with a hum of circuits and reimagining of memory. They just… uploaded a whole new life and set him loose.

And he didn’t remember her. And...

"He's not going to remember me,” she said, her voice hushed.

Deacon frowned. "I take it you’re not talking about H2-22 anymore, because that ship’s already sailed."

Fixer shook her head. "Shaun.” How could she possibly come to terms with it? That she’d had a baby and now he was ten and she’d missed all those years. “They took him ten years ago. They revived us, the three of us. They took Shaun, and shot Nate in the head… and I couldn't do anything. Trapped in… the pod. Then they froze me up for another ten years and now I’m out and I have no _fucking_ idea why. Six months old when they took him. He's ten now, and the Institute raised him, and he's not going to know who I am."

Deacon sucked in a breath. "That… I’d had some suspicions. But..."

"Of course you did,” she said, but she huffed a wry little laugh, shrugging, softening the words. Deacon smiled, a private little thing that she didn’t think was meant for her.

They sat side by side for a moment, silence falling between them. Her mind floated away, wrung out and exhausted in the aftermath of her tirade and the sweeping fear for what remained of her family. Shaun. Trapped in the Institute. Ten years old. He wouldn’t even _know_ her. And somehow she felt like the whole thing was an elaborate game, designed to test her. None of it felt _real._

She was ready to wake up now.

Fuck. _Crisse_ _de_...fuck _._

"I need to get out of here," she said, not bothering to ease the tension in her voice.

“Me too,” he admitted, and Fixer felt a sab of guilt for her words before, about killing synths. About how wrong the Railroad was. Despite the cracks he’d shown before, Deacon’s walls were back up as firmly as they’d ever been and he looked as easygoing as ever. “Where to?”

"The Rail. See if MacCready’s there. I’ll ask about the Gunners. And I want a drink." _Maybe three._

“Sure thing boss. There’s some things I want to take care of. I can take our stuff to the Rexford. Meet you at the hotel later?”

She nodded. “Thank you. Take this thing too?” She worked the clasps of her pip-boy and Deacon nodded. “I hate wearing it in this town.”

“Feels like a bit of a burden, I imagine. I’ll take good care of your toy. Also...I’d suggest a quick costume change too, for both of us. Always eyes in Goodneighbor.” He wiggled his fingers at her and she she heaved a sigh. “Irma can give you a place to change.”

Fixer nodded. “I’ll see what I’ve got in my bag.”

“Anything that doesn’t scream ‘merc’ is probably good,” he replied. “You rock that that look and all, but I think it’s giving you a reputation. That helmet might become a little iconic if you’re not careful. Things around here aren't quite what they seem, and even a little change can throw off the casual observer.”

“What about the not-as-casual observers?” she asked.

He tilted his head with a tight little smile. “I’ll take care of that.”

~~~

Jeanne stared hard at her reflection in a grainy mirror, frowning. Her reflection stared back, strong jawed and stubborn chinned. Full mouth, and dark eyes. She always thought her eyes looked sort of sad.  Arched brows, sharp-cut cheekbones. A blunt, straight nose. So many freckles. Her hair was getting longer and needed a trim. She prodded at the fine wrinkles around her eyes, just starting to show, and softened the frown between her brows.

The dressing room she huddled in belonged to Irma, and Jeanne was grateful for the privacy as well as the soap and basin of lukewarm water. Jeanne’s hair was damp now after a wash—the first full one in weeks, her face clean of accumulated grime, from radiation dust and raider gore. Irma said Jeanne was free to take whatever she wanted from her wardrobe, or use any of the plethora of cosmetics stashed in the room.

Digging through the clothes, Jeanne found a bright red blouse that she slipped into with a happy sigh. The silky material felt good under her fingers and against her clean skin, still slightly damp from her basin-wash. The shirt was the softest thing she’d felt in months. She found a trunk full of skirts and pants, and eventually found a pair of jeans that fit. Jeanne made a note both to thank Irma, and that she was the person to visit if Jeanne ever needed to expand her wardrobe. She pulled on her old leather jacket and tucked damp strands of hair back behind her ears, peering back at her reflection and then down at the pots of cosmetics lined up on the dressing table.

Irma said to use whatever she found…

Jeanne shifted through the pots and palettes, wondering if Irma made the makeup herself. Anything pre-war would be good and gone by now… She passed over eyeshadows and a palette of black kohl. Too much effort. Then she found something that made her pause: a tiny jar of red lipstick. The frown reasserted itself between her brows and she wavered for a moment. Was there a point of making up her face? Then again… did she need one? Lipstick was the one bit of makeup she enjoyed, and who knew when she’d have another chance. Jeanne found a brush and dipped it into the pot. She leaned forward and stared hard at her reflection for a moment before pouting her lips and painting them red.

She stepped back to assess the effect, and for a moment she saw pre-war Jeanne looking back at her, the Jeanne that had gone out on dates with Nate during her pregnancy, and after. Add a pair of slacks and heels instead of jeans and boots, and a broad-brimmed hat over a neat bob and she might have even looked like ten-years-younger Jeanne, on furlough from service and ready to hit the town. Jeane stared in shock for a moment, then swallowed a quiet, giddy little laugh and twisted and turned to check out her own ass. Not terrible, though she had hoped things would be a little more firm considering all the walking she’d been doing.

“You look lovely, darling,” Irma purred when Jeanne emerged from the changing room. “Off to the Rail for a drink?”

“Maybe two,” Jeanne said. “Thank you for everything… I feel…”  
  
The woman smiled. “Good as new?”

Jeanne smiled back, a little bittersweet. “Almost,” she said.

Jeanne felt eyes on her as she made the quick walk to the bar. She _always_ felt eyes on her in Goodneighbor. People stared, and nowhere in the Commonwealth did she feel so _different_. Diamond City was always awkward, but Bunker Hill didn’t care who passed through so long as you had something to trade. Goodneighbor’s denizens were _interested._ In her. In how her body was soft and her skin wasn’t weathered, when almost everyone else was lean and hard. Why she didn’t have that wasteland swagger. They watched, because they _wanted_. Such scarcity…

The need for a drink reasserted itself with a vengeance. Not just because of H2-22 or the fight she’d had with Deacon, but because the whole Commonwealth seemed to have eyes on her and she was sick and tired of the creeping feeling of wrongness the whole world threw at her and—

The Third Rail welcomed her with red light and slow music. The old train station smelled of old beer, tobacco smoke, and incense that tried and failed to cover the stench. Grime covered chipped tiles on the walls and floors and everything exuded a sense of dampness, condensation gathering in the corners.  Magnolia sang from her perch, swaying gently as she crooned into the microphone, and Jeanne smiled. Despite the grime, the smell, this was one place in Goodneighbor she actually liked. Underground, everyone occupied with their own poison.

And the music.

She scanned the room for familiar faces and saw Hancock’s bright red coat at the bar, right next to MacCready. She sidled up beside the ghoul and leaned over, murmuring a greeting.

Hancock chuckled when he saw her. “Ah, if it ain’t the little scout. Takin’ a booze break?”

“Something like that,” she said.

“Jeanne? Hey, boss!” RJ grinned at her from around Hancock. “And here I thought you forgot about me.”

“Impossible, MacCready,” she replied and he grinned, all crooked teeth.  A wiry, red-haired woman leaned past him, her eyes narrowing as she studied Jeanne. Jeanne met her stare with one of her own, and inclined her head slightly.

“This is Cait,” RJ said, gesturing to the redhead. “Cait, this is the lady I told you about. Jeanne. My boss. Yours too, now.”

Jeanne frowned. “What’s this about bosses?”

“Cait and I are teamin’ up. Freelancers. You pay me, I pay her. We all get paid.” He waved his hands vaguely, as if caps might fall from thin air.

“You didn’t say she she was cute, Mac,” the woman said in a broad Irish accent. MacCready blanched and sputtered, and Cait smiled at Jeanne like a predatory little cat, green eyes sly and playful.

Cait reached out a hand and Jeanne shook it. Her hand was warm and calloused and covered in scars. Long, elegant fingers crooked from multiple breaks. Her bare arms revealed the reddish irritation of a few mostly healed injection sites, and faint blue lines of track marks on the inside of the woman’s elbow. Given the prevalence of intravenous drug use Jeanne had seen among raiders especially, she wasn’t surprised. Cait might be ex-raider herself. Still, she resisted the urge to pathologize Cait’s obvious drug use as her doctor’s brain always tried to do. She wasn’t a medic anymore. Jeanne could hardly help herself at the moment.

She leaned back and crosses her arms, studying the woman, but she couldn’t help the little smirk that spread across her face. Cait returned it and Jeanne felt a little lurch of attraction flash between them.

She'd had always gone for tough women. The butch women. There was Jen, back in the army, and then Noémie much later, during her CAAB days. That had ended in tears. A few others short lived casual partners here and there in her history as well, across a spectrum of genders. All tough, and angry, and emotionally unavailable. It was really for the best. Nate was really the softest person she’d ever had as a lover, and  _that_  hadlanded her somewhere she’d never thought she’d be. Married, with a baby. Living in America. Widowed. 200 years in the future.

Jeanne licked her lips and studied Cait from the corner of her eye as the conversation moved on.

Cait looked good in her bare-armed vesty corset thing, all broad shoulders. Her arms, lean, corded with muscle. Deep circles beneath her eyes spoke either of illness or fatigue, perhaps both, and Jeanne thought she might actually have a black eye. Definitely a fighter. Scrappy in a way Jeanne admired but would never understand.

She gave Cait one more glance, her mouth twisting in a little smile before turning back to RJ, and business. “Speaking of ‘bosses’, I have got some questions and a possible job for you,” she said.

“Yeah? Spill it, then,” said RJ, looking bored. But Jeanne knew it was all an act. He was the worst at playing it cool. He was eager for work and validation, like a puppy whose eyes lit up when someone said the word “walk.”

Jeanne shook her head. “Sending you north. There’s work to be done for the Minutemen. We’ll plan in the morning. Drink first. It’s been a long day.”

He nodded, deflating a bit, and Jeanne rapped on the bar, flagging down the Mister Handy—Whitechapel Charley, she thought he was called. The bot floated over and she spilled a handful of caps onto the counter.

“Bottle of rum,” she said.

“Bootstrap or the vintage?” the bot said, exuding annoyance as his one optical attachment stared steadily, the aperture constricting slightly like he was narrowing his eyes at her.

Jeanne hesitated for a moment, stumped by the question… bootstrap meant bathtub liquor, and vintage must mean pre-war....

“I ain’t got all day, gov,” Charlie snapped. He hovered before her, his arms twitching like he wanted to shoo her away. She half smiled, thinking of Codsworth. Whitechapel Charley was much less kindly, but she wondered if either of them were happy, serving people like this. Or if they even felt anything close to happy. Could they? Or why General Atomics had designated an English accent to their Mister Handies. Jeanne never had a clue about that one.

“Vintage,” she said, eyeing the pre-war bottles on the shelf. In that moment she decided that whatever happened that night, she was going to own it. 200 year old rum… it could only end poorly, but Jeanne was done trying to make things turn out just right. She'd find Deacon later. Had he told her their room number at the Rexford? 

_Shit..._

“Anythin’ to go with your poison?” the bot asked.

“Uh...A bottle of cola and a couple of shot glasses,” she said.

The bottle of rum and her soda, as well as half a dozen shot glasses arrived, and Jeanne poured herself a brimming glass. She slammed it back, gasping at the burn of thick, sweet-sour liquor when it hit the back of her throat. She shook her head, eyes watering, and slid the glass back on the counter, the shape of her lips imprinted in red lipstick around the rim.

 _Pretty mouth_ , Nate had always told her. The best lips he’d ever had the honor of kissing. Soft, and full, he’d always whispered. Made for pouting, hiding a shockingly beaming smile. She sniffed at the hazy memories of his kisses, and resisted taking another shot.

“That stuff’ll eat a hole through wood," Hancock drawled. She blinked back tears from the burn of the booze, or maybe thinking of Nate and stared blearily at Hancock. “Hope your gut is up to it.” The rough hasp of Hancock’s voice matched the burn working its way down her body. “What's the occasion?” he asked. His voice went solicitous. “Lover’s quarrel?”

She snorted a graceless laugh, thinking back on the argument she’d had with Amari and Deacon. How could such good people be so _wrong_? “Hardly,” she replied, cracking her soda and taking a sip to chase the lingering burn left by the rum. “Existential crisis.”

“Ah,” Hancock said. “I feel that. Usually when I’ve huffed one inhaler more of Jet than I should'a. In that case, why don’t we move the party to my VIP room in the back? You can tell me your troubles.”

“My troubles are all classified,” she said with a regretful sigh, feeling a sudden need for drama.

“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” he said with a wicked grin, dark eyes catching the light like a cat’s, the hollow of his nose socket dark and shadowed. Jeanne smirked. Hancock tried to be intimidating, but Jeanne could see the goofball hiding beneath all his knife loving, hard-edged, dressed-up bluster.

Hancock tipped back the rest of his drink, something dark and evil-smelling and then shooed Cait and RJ from their barstools like a hen with her chicks. The two exchange glances as the mayor swept past them with a regal flourish. He was a...what had he called himself? A zombie pirate king.

RJ huffed and followed in Hancock’s wake. “Can we get a bowl of Cheezy Poofs that doesn’t have blood in it? I think I found a tooth in that bowl, earlier...” he called out to Charlie and Cait cackled.  

“It’s part of the atmosphere, MacCready. Don’t ruin it,” she drawled, hanging back to walk with Jeanne.

MacCready gagged and Charlie swept the bowl of irradiated orange snack puffs away, grumbling, gathering bottles and glasses. Jeanne grabbed her rum, her cola, and the shotglass stained with red lipstick, and followed down the little hall to Hancock’s private room.

Swathed in velvet, the room put off an even softer, more insistent red glow than the bar. Jeanne found a spot on the couch, looking around at the cobbled together decor that reminded her vaguely of the Memory Den, but less grand, more cozy. Intimate. She poured another shot and tossed it back with a gasp, chasing it with a gulp of cola.

“Mind if I share your poison?” Cait said, coming to sit next to Jeanne on the couch. Jeanne shifted to give her room, and Cait gave her one of those odd, lingering looks.

Jeanne smiled in spite of herself, and poured Cait a brimming glass of brown liquor. Fingers brushed, and Jeanne felt a little dizzy. From the booze.

“What’s your story?” Jeanne asked in spite of herself. She should really be talking to MacCready about Gunner activity, trying to figure out where the synth trafficking was coming from. But she was tired. Work was exhausting. Deacon’s relentless missions were exhausting. She needed a distraction. Even if it was just flirting.

Cait smiled and threw back the shot without so much as a sputter. “Used to be a cage fighter till I got sick of it and killed the guy who held my contract. And all the raiders at the show that night, too.” Cait licked her lips, and Jeanne decided in that moment that she would redlight any more than flirting and casual touches with this woman. Drug use, murderer… it screamed complications. Even if kissing someone might be nice. But no. Maybe flirting...mixed with the booze. Hm.

“Oh?” she said, and her voice sounded softer than she meant it to. “And how did you end up working with RJ?” Jeanne’s face tingled from the sudden onset of booze and she tilted her head to the side, feeling heavy and loose.

“He helped,” Cait said. Jeanne glanced at MacCready, who was telling a story about something called Little Lamplight. Hancock looked bored, and he shot a knowing smirk towards Jeanne. Sly little bastard was eavesdropping.  Cait reached over Jeanne to grab the bottle of rum and poured them both another shot, their thighs brushing.

Jeanne took the shotglass, this one different, unmarked by her lipstick. 

"Oh, Crisse de tabarnak," she muttered, and tossed back the shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Jeanne met Cait and was like @_@ and I didn't plan for that and had nothing to do with it, and have no idea where it's going. Fun when characters run away with your stories like that. I'm sure we'll see more of them making bedroom eyes at each other and maybe other stuff. *tears out hair* Anyway everyone is poly so it's not going to be a love triangle drama thing cuz I find that boring. Fixer is so gay for Cait omg how did this happen? 
> 
> -FYI I’ll be getting to Deacon’s final affinity talk in the next two chapters and I’m going to be tweaking his history. I’m making the changes for story reasons that aren’t going to show up till after the affinity talk, so be prepared? Idk, heads up/fair warning if that's not your bag of kittens. Not huge changes but it's one of the reasons I have this tagged as canon divergent. 
> 
> -Next chapter is FULL of shippy Deacon/Fixer feels I PROMISE!! It was supposed to be in this chapter, but... long chapter is long. It's mostly done and I'll try to post it up by the end of this week. :)


	18. To the Mattress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued Goodneighbor shenanigans, now with more dancing.

**Deacon**

Deacon struck a match and brought it to the end of a cigarette, inhaling smoke. He ignored how the flame trembled as he drew it away from the smoke, blowing out the flame in a cloud of blue smoke in the stale air of the room he’d rented in the Rexford. He ignored the ache in his chest as well as the trembling. His lungs were still healing, trying desperately to stay in his chest instead of packing up and finding a new place to live outside of his body, and he probably shouldn’t be blackening his lungs with poison. Deacon coughed a bit and took another drag.

He should probably quit, but smoking was such a good prop, something to do with his hands. Something as easy and socially acceptable as breathing. And it really did help calm him the fuck down when he got spun around.

 _She was right._ And he was mad that she was right. Mad that he hadn’t put his food down, even when he knew it was wrong. He’d gone along so blindly with the memory wipes when his eyes were open to so many other things. Hence the shaking. Which he ignored.

He was ignoring a lot of things at the moment.

Deacon pulled the cigarette from his mouth with slightly more steady hands. Damn it, there was no time to talk existential crises, let alone to have them. He shook out his shoulders, rolled his head and affected the swagger he needed in order to assume one of his more unsavory identities. Lex.

He adjusted his white shirt and black vest, brushing lint from his slacks and glancing down to make sure his oxfords held a bit of a shine. He said a few lines out loud, dropping into Lex’s Bostonian accent. Lex was a simple gangster who knew a lot of people. He was an easy persona to wear, not so different from Deacon himself. Lex was sleazier though. A total asshole. Great at making deals though.

Time to get to work. After the courser fight, Deacon had been doing some quiet digging in regards to synth trafficking while Fixer focused on the main stuff. It was lucky that their trip to Goodneighbor aligned so well, because intel over the past week told him that there was something fishy here. Besides the usual, general fishiness of Goodneighbor.

Deacon grabbed the gunnysack he’d retrieved from a cache just behind the Memory Den and took the elevator down into the basement. He swung the bag back and forth, the heavy weight of its contents keeping momentum.

He got lucky; Fred Allen was down in his lab mixing something over a hotplate, the pot spewing noxious yellow fumes.

"Well hello there, Fred," said Deacon drawled in Lex’s thick accent, leaning against the doorframe. “Do I need a gasmask to be down here? That smells like absolute shit.”  

The chemist jumped and spun to face him, gaping like a fish, his used-up face flushed.

"Lex!" Fred gasped, eyes darting to the sack Deacon carried, and then back to Deacon’s sunglasses. “No, no. Just some fertilizer, nothing poisonous.”

"Mmmhmm. Just some fertilizer. Yeah.” Deacon grinned and ducked his head to light another cigarette. He held underhand between thumb and forefinger the way Lex always did, like he was trying to hide it. He pretended that Lex hid a lot of things.

Deacon exhaled in a cloud of blue smoke that mixed with the hazy fumes. “How ya doin' these days?" he asked, making sure he sounded like he didn’t actually care.

"Ho-oh, not too bad, not too bad at all, Lex.” Fred put a lid over his little pot and peeled off rubber gloves, blinking owlishly at Deacon. “Been a while. You deal with that lady tried stabbin’ you?"

"Yeah,” he said, sighing. “Just a _biiig_ misunderstanding," he said.

"Y-yeah. Usually is, usually...usually is. Glad t’hear it. Sey, you got anything for me?” His eyes darted to the sack under Deacon’s arm. “Town's been dry, it's been dry all right."

"Might be,” Deacon said, dropping the sack down on the table with a thunk. “Depends on what you’ve got for _me._ ”

"Cost, yeah, yeah. Caps, info. You know I'm good. All just between you and me. What’s the word you’re lookin’ for?"

"Gunners in Goodneighbor." Deacon crossed his arms, looking down at Fred even though they were of a height.

Fred’s eyes went wide even as his mouth went tight. "Gunners, Gunners...." He looked anywhere but towards Deacon. Fred always played hard to get when he knew something, but it was more out of habit than anything. They both knew the dance.

"Yeah, you know,” Deacon said. “Big scary mercenaries in olive drab? Highly organized. Very expensive. Big customers of yours?"

'Yeah....There's that kid who hangs out in the Rail. Mike..Mick...Mac—"

"I know all about MacCready," Deacon said.

"He was gettin' harassed by some gunners a few weeks ago."

Deacon shook his head, tutting, blowing smoke. "Two months ago. Old news,” he said, shaking his head in profound disappointment. “Anything more recent?"

"Uhhhh…” Fred came a bit closer. There were some workin' with Marowski. Came inna town yesterday. Negotiations. All very hush hush.” He cleared his throat. “Something about a gang, an’ Gunners.”

Deacon’s ears pricked up. Gang...there was only one gang that bothered specifically with synths. Deacon dumped a canister full of yellow liquid from the sack, and Fred took a step towards the table, eyes going wide.

“Is that—” Fred liked his lips, and Deacon rocked the HalluciGen canister away from Fred, back towards himself, chuckling. Not his usual knowing one, but meaner, lower. Lex reveled in holding the goods away from Fred.

"It’s _exactly_ what you think it is.” He snuffed his smoke out on the table and flicked the butt at Fred’s feet. God, Lex was an asshole.

“You ain’t never come through for me like this before, Lex.” Fred giggled like a schoolgirl. “Usually it’s just a loada bloodleaf or somethin, but this—”

“You didn’t get it from me, remember?”

“I remember.”

“The negotiators,” Deacon cut in. “They still here?"

Fred’s mouth went tight again and his eyes darted from the cannister to Deacon and back again. “Marowski’s out of town for the day.”

Deacon smiled Lex’s smarmy smile and rolled the cannister towards Fred.

Marowski’s office sat on the second floor of the hotel. Two guards posted outside the door as Deacon walked by, but the door was closed, which usually meant Marowski wasn’t home, or he was in meetings, confirming what Fred had said downstairs.

Damn, he needed Fixer for this one. Well, okay. He didn’t _need_ her. He’d broken into tougher places with a clipboard and brisque attitude, but it would have been _nice_ if they could have actually done some proper undercover work together. There had been a lot more fighting and a lot less spying than he strictly enjoyed over the past two months. He knew Fixer was capable of the whole undercover thing based on what she’d told him of her past, her work with that underground resistance…

He could go get her, run the con together. _Oooorr…_  

Deacon huffed a quiet sigh. Best for a classic approach.

Only Diamond City rivaled Goodneighbor in the amount costume changes Deacon made in any given visit. He dropped Lex off in the hotel room and slipped into his plaids and jeans, wig, and a cap. A bit of dirt on his neck and face, and he was a laborer.  

He went scrounging for a mop, a few rags, a feather duster, and his disguise was complete. Deacon slouched his way through the Rexford, knocking on doors and announcing room service along the second floor. When he got to Marowski’s office, one of the guards stepped forward, barring his way.

“What do you want?” the man growled.

Deacon glanced up at the man and then back at his hands, shuffling his feet. “Clair said every room on this floor’s gotta be cleaned,” he said.

The guard grumbled. “Make it quick.”

Deacon’s mental jaw dropped at how easy it was. His physical jaw remained in place, however, and he looked up with a doff of his cap. The big idiot didn’t even question him, just went to unlock the door.

“Just a quick dust n’ mop. No problem,” Deacon said. The guard aside and Deacon slipped into the room, wielding his maid’s tools. He went for the windows first, attacking every surface with a rag, and then he moved to the desk.

A quick glance at the door showed the guard with his back half turned and Deacon dusted slowly, scanning the spread of papers across the desk. Accounting, notes on people of interest, an invitation to a New Year’s party in Vault 114, lists of inventory and supply… A phrase caught his eye on a scrap of paper. L&L Gang. Dirty raiders, known for their hatred of synths.

Deacon knocked the papers to the floor, sending things flying, and dropped to his knees to read the handwritten note.

**L &L Gang smuggling route established west of Glowing Sea. Sending goods south to P.F. Institute contact still confirmed partner in return for Commonwealth intel. **

Deacon swore under his breath, keeping his mind carefully focused on the words and not the meaning so he could commit them to memory. He gathered the papers, shuffling them and dumping them back on the desk.

“Hey!” the guard said, poking his head and the muzzle of his tommygun in through the doorway. “Hey what are you doing?”

Deacon backed away from the desk with muttered apologies, kicking over his bucket of water and splashing it across the floor.

“I’m so sorry! Jesus, sorry, what a mess.” Deacon scrambled, trying to mop it up with his rag and failing miserably.

The guard snarled, jerking the muzzle of his gun. “Get outta here. Go on, get.”

Deacon gathered his cleaning tools and fled with muttered apologies, leaving papers all over the floor.

As he whipped around the corner he heard the guards arguing.

“Marowski’s gonna be pissed.”

“Clean it up. Don’t tell him. Just…” Their voices faded

Back in the room, Deacon switched back into Lex mode. If he was skulking around he might as well have a reason to be in Goodneighbor. Besides, this was Lex’s last hurrah—after stealing back the HalluciGen cannister tonight, Lex would be a wanted man. Besides, why not give such a fine outfit one final spin?

Deacon threw himself down on the bed and started writing up his reports in shorthand. L&L Gang. They _had_ been awfully quiet lately. And Marowski… Institute informant. He felt vindicated by that. Big player in the Commonwealth, working with those bastards… And someone on the inside was helping the whole scheme along…

 _Jesus_. Fixer would have to look into that when she got inside. The thought of her going in there sent a shudder through him, a thrill of excitement and dread that he quashed under a brutal heel. Every moment of his life seemed to be leading up to the point when they slingshotted Fixer into the jaws of the beast, and there was no point in getting sentimental now.

He pulled out the New Years party invitation from his pocket, swiped from the desk when he scattered the papers. The details were printed in neat hand on a rectangular bit of cardboard. Vault 114… New Year's. Four days away. He copied the handwriting a few times on his pad of paper until he got it just right, and then wrote out the text so he could forge an invitation later.

He lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, whistling to himself. He had an idea. An idea he’d _definitely_ need Fixer for. But he needed to let it percolate before he made any specific plans. He relaxed into the lumpy mattress and let himself daydream for a while.

~~~

Deacon woke from an accidental catnap an hour later. Fixer wasn’t back yet, and he frowned. Goddamn. Annoyance chafed at him. They has _work_ to do. Maybe MacCready had given her some intel, or she’d gone off to chase a lead without him or... Deacon hauled himself out of bed, jamming Lex’s fedora on his head, and headed to the Third Rail.

He found her in the bar. Specifically Hancock’s private party room. Dancing.

Of all things he expected to find down in the Rail—and he’d seen a lot of strange things there, let alone all the things he could dream up on his own—he had _not_ expected dancing.

 _Fixer_ dancing, specifically.

She swayed to the music, one of Magnolia’s originals, her hands on the hips of a wiry woman with greasy red hair. The woman looked vaguely familiar and Deacon tried to puzzle out where he’d seen her before as he watched. The pair stumbled and laughed, and having a grand old time.

Deacon leaned in the doorway, wondering how long it would take her to notice him. He prickled a little with annoyance but nodded to Hancock, who nodded back, but the ghoul didn’t say anything, just watched Fixer and the red-head, evidently entertained if Deacon judged his expression right.  

The redhead spotted him first.

“Looks like we got another party-goer,” she said. She had a funny accent. Irish.

“Deacon!” Fixer cried out when she saw him, sending a rare, beaming smile in his direction. Deacon cringed internally. Hearing his name shouted out loud was one of his least favorite things in the infinite list of things he could possibly hear. That smile was nice though. She was wearing _lipstick_. Bright red lipstick that matched the high points of color in her cheeks and the red shirt she wore. Irma must have been feeling generous.

“Evenin’ partner,” he said, tipping his hat up with a thumb. The prickling annoyance met a new rival named amusement, and the two feelings duked it out while Fixer extracted herself from the redhead’s clutches and swayed—okay, it was more of a weave but he’d be generous—over to him and steadied herself on his arm. The redhead shot him a sly look and went to go sit with Hancock.

Fixer stopped tugging on him to frown up with such concern in her eyes that he almost cracked up right there. He wished he could to take a picture of this moment and show it to her later, so he could gloat about how he’d actually managed to get her to buy into a lie without doubting him from the start. So sceptical, Fixer.

Still, he stuck with what he did best.

“Oh, I can’t dance,” he said with a sorrowful shake of his head, regret painted across his face. “Physically incapable of it. Not since….” he pitched his voice lower— “the accident.”

“The accident?” Fixer stopped tugging on him to frown up with such concern in her eyes that he almost cracked up right there. He wished he could to take a picture of this moment and show it to her later, so he could gloat about how he’d actually managed to get her to buy into a lie without doubting him from the start. So sceptical, Fixer.

He nodded gravely and she frowned. “I don’t like to talk about it much. But yeah, it was brutal. Went in for a face swap. Ugliest mug I’ve ever had. Uglier than this one now, even.” She made a dismissive sound, which he ignored. “Anyway, there was a mixup and the Doc ended up confusing my head with my feet. Ended up keeping the ugly face, but walked out with two left feet.”

Her frown shifted into the sceptical one he was used to and she shook her head. “Bullshit,” she said, and peered down at his feet. “You are wearing a left and a right shoe right now.” Her accent was thicker than he’d ever heard it before, with articulated constants and edgier vowels, and Deacon grinned in spite of himself.

“You wouldn’t believe how hard to find two matching left shoes.” He rolled his shoulders. “I’d show you my feet to prove it, but I’m really self conscious.”

She shook her head, about to lay into him no doubt, but Hancock cut over her—“If you don’t dance with the lady, I’m gonna!”

“Don’t be greedy,” she called back at Hancock. “You already got your dance.” She glanced back at Deacon and sighed, threw up her hands. “Fine, fine. I should probably go to bed anyway—”

Deacon was usually fairly good at impulse control. He had a lot of impulses, mostly to say stupid shit to annoy people, which he only said with calculated precision—except for with Fixer, around whom he regularly acquainted his foot with his mouth—but overall he was pretty damn cool about things. But the impulse to grab her hand as she turned away seized him and Deacon didn’t quite get it under control in time. He reached out and folded his hand around her’s, gave her a spin. She stumbled and a laugh escaped him. Too easy.

“Ah! Deacon,” she cried. “ _Crisse de osti de tabarnak de—”_ Her curse ended in a little shriek when she landed in his arms. He laughed and started to sway back and forth in time to the music, a song he’d heard a million times before— _Anything Goes—_ playing now that Magnolia was no doubt taking a well deserved break. Deacon held one of her hands in his, out and away from them, the other on her waist, a perfectly respectable distance between them.

“Can’t dance my ass,” she said as they meandered around the floor. The red haired woman wolf-whistled and Deacon swung Fixer around as the next verse started.

“Who’re your friends?” he asked as they swayed to the silly little tune, nodding to the redhead and MaCcready.

“MacCready,” she said. “And Cait,” she said. “This is my—this is Deacon.”

MacCready waved vaguely but Cait grinned at him, almost predatory.

“Oh, aye,” Cait said. “Fine t’meet ya, even if you’re an aresehole just cuttin’ in on my dance like that.”

Cait... _Crusher Cait_. Prize cage fighter out of that raider fightclub.

"No need to get cagey,” he said back, still swaying with Fixer. Hancock cackled and Cait frowned at him and he rushed on before she could catch the joke. “Cait...Cait…” He pretended to think for a moment, and then brightened up. “Say, you're fresh outta the Combat Zone, aren't you?”

Cait sat up. "Yeah? You a fan, gorgeous?"

"I just like knowing the who's who of the Commonwealth, beautiful," he said. Cait winked at him and Deacon gave Fixer another spin. She laughed and he glanced down at her, finding her flushed and smiling. Dancing with drunk Fixer was like handling a kitten, all unsteady limbs, and wavering eyes, and adorable…. adorableness.

“You’re a happy drunk,” he said, leaning in so only she could hear him. She swayed closer, close enough that their bodies brushed and a warm wave of _something_ passed through him, washing away the last of his annoyance. She deserved this; a little moment of letting go after everything she’d been through. And all the things she was going to go through. A real wringer, all of it, with her at the center. She should be allowed to let loose once in awhile.

He slowed a bit despite the uptempo song, and she drew their hands towards her shoulder.

“‘m sorry,” she mumbled against his shoulder. “Keeping you waiting. Lost track of track of time.”

He huffed. “Worth it to see you not so buttoned up,” he said. “The mighty Fixer, giggling and tripping over her own feet.”  
  
“I _do not_ giggle,” she said. He spun her again as the song ended and she did indeed giggle.

“Yeah, you definitely don’t giggle,” he murmured.

He dropped her hand and she wavered in the middle of the floor, looking around as if puzzled to find herself there. Deacon glanced to the side table where a mostly empty bottle of old-world rum stood sentinel over a hoard of shot glasses, some of them stained with lipstick.

"I'm going to bed," Fixer announced. “Thanks for the drinks, Hancock.”

"You gonna be good, Jeanne?" MacCready asked, shooting Deacon a look from his spot on the couch.

" _Ouis_ , _bon_. Yes. I'm f-fine," she said, gathering herself and weaving towards the door.

“Night, lovely,” Cait called. “Can’t wait t’ work for ya!”

Fixer turned around and walked backwards a step, waving before she stumbled against the doorframe and slid out of the room. Cait snorted a laugh. Hancock winked and tossed Deacon a heavy leather jacket, the one Jeanne used to wear before the duster became a permanent fixture of her wardrobe.

Deacon followed Fixer across the bar, watching her step over boots and legs, navigating around tables with the concentration usually reserved for delicate tasks involving fine motor skills.

She made it to the stairs without incident, and then stopped, staring up like she was considering the best approach to a complicated math problem.

“Need some help there?” Deacon said, and she jumped like she forgot he was behind her.

“I think I can manage some stairs,” she said, gathering her dignity. She managed three of them before she tripped and Deacon reached forward, grabbing her by the waist and pushing her upright.

“There we go,” he said. Her arm slipped around his hips and together they made it up the stairs without too much staggering. God _damn_ she was drunk. He almost felt bad for future Fixer’s hangover. Almost.

“Get home safe,” Ham gruffed from the door, and a moment later they made it into in the damp Goodneighbor night.

Still dressed as Lex, with Fixer drunk and pressing into his side like some girl he was taking back to his room, the night took on a sharpness he didn’t like. The neon lights blared at him, lurid and overbright against creeping shadows. Deacon felt eyes watch them from every corner. Someone catcalled them and Deacon's arm went tight around her shoulders, scanning for the asshole, but Fixer snuggled closer. With her head on his shoulder, Deacon’s attention snapped back to how she fit under his arm, and how warm she felt against his side.

He laughed in spite of himself. “Perfect height for a chin rest,” he said in a voice that was at odds with his nerves. He put his chin on the top of her head and rested it there as they walked, his eyes still scanning the dark for threats.

"Ow," she whined. "You're bony." She wiggled against him, shaking her head until he released her, but her arm remained around his waist, looser than before. She watched her feet like she walked across the deck of a pitching ship, at least until she stumbled over a chunk of asphalt and careened off like a yo-yo that had come untethered from its string.

He steered her back on course. “Easy tiger. Let’s try staying upright.”

“That’s you job,” she said. “I’m jus’ along for the ride.”

Deacon chuckled, looping his arm around her waist again. She leaned into him and sighed.

“I think you’re great, you know?” she said, her voice hazy. “ _J’aime le way qu’à hang,”_

“You what now?” he said and she sniffed at him.

“I’m _trying_ to be nice. You work hard,” she slurred, her head lolling into his shoulder. “An’ you’ve done a lot for me… And everyone. And know one knows you do all this... Not Glory, or… I jus—”

“Oh my god.” He cut her off, the lump in his chest insisting that he not hear another damn word. “You’re not just a happy drunk. You’re downright _sentimental._ ”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she said, straightening up against his side. “I have a rep-” she stumbled over the word, “a rep-reputation to maintain, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

They made it to the Rexford arm-in-arm, and Deacon led her up the stairs to the room he’d rented and she seemed more steady now, after the fresh-ish air and all the leaning. He wondered how much support she _actually_ needed at this point, though she still stuck to his side like a burr.

That’s when he heard them. Morowski and voices, rumbling and rancous, promising trouble.

 _Shit. Goddamn it. Stupid_.

Deacon went stiff, squeezing Fixer’s arm. “ _Il a mauvais hommes,_ ” he said in pathetic French, and her head jerked around.

“ _A_... _Mauvais hommes?_ ” She squinted at him like she’d never seen him before and then laughed. “Bad...men _? Crisse—_ ”

“Shhhh…” he hushed her and her eyes darted towards the source of the voices. He leaned closer. “If they see me they might think I’m someone named Lex. Follow my lead.” He slipped his arm around her waist, and turned into her so he had his back half to the men pouring out of one of the nearby rooms and trooping down the hall.

“Had a good night, sweetheart?” Deacon’s voice turned into a drawl, his voice going soft and solicitous. Fixer shot him a startled look from where she leaned away from him, half ready to fight and half ready to fall over. Then her eyes widened in understanding, and she smirked.

“It’s about to get better,” she slurred, grabbing the front of his shirt in both hands to catch herself from tipping over, or maybe to pull him closer. It achieved both aims because his nose brushed her cheek _and_ she stayed upright.

“Sure is,” he managed to say before she kissed him full on the mouth.

It would have been a good kiss if it were a real one. It was deep, her mouth warm, working over his like she was learning the shape of his lips. He kissed her back, lips moving vaugely over hers as he kept one eye on the approaching horde of baddies. Which room had they come out of? He’d have to check later—

“Lex?” A familiar, cocky voice snapped his cover’s name out like a whip.

Shit. They were supposed to walk on by. Nothing to see her, just some random guy kissing his lady in the hall because they couldn’t quite make it to their room. Happened all the time. Even if it was just a mock of a kiss. Deacon slowed down, pulling away from Fixer with exaggerated reluctance, though he didn’t have to fake the slight shortness of breath.

He glanced up meet Marowski’s flat eyed stare.

“Little busy,” Deacon growled, making his voice drop half an octave. One of the Gunners chuckled.

Marowski’s eyebrows twitched at his disrespect. “I see that, but business is business. I heard you brought some goods to Mr. Allen this afternoon.”

“I sure did,” Deacon said, annoyance in every syllable. Fixer shifted against him, and alarm bells started to go off in his head. Fixer was quick, but she was also drunk a skunk, and he had a sinking feeling that she was about to blow their cover—

“Lex, baby?” Fixer’s voice came out sweet and sultry, and relief flooded his system. She’d been listening. She pouted up at him, arms slipping around his waist. She was the very picture of a bored, demanding lover. Never should have doubted her.

“What is it, sugar?” he said to her, caught in those big brown eyes, heavy-lidded from all the booze in her system. “I’m workin’.”

“You’re always working,” she whined, swaying a little. “I’m tired. And I want...” Deacon let a crooked grin slide onto his face as she went up on her toes to nuzzle up his neck to his ear, where she whispered something to him in French. He shivered as her breath tickled his skin, warm and humid, and he pulled her closer, smirking at the small hoard of mercs arrayed behind their boss.

Then she nipped his neck and it felt like an electric shock. He inhaled sharply as her little teeth grazed along his pulse point, gut twisting and brain going sideways for the hair’s width of a moment.

“Allright, doll,” he said with an only half-feigned husk in his voice. “Gimme a minute.”

She whined again against his neck and Deacon felt a thrill of...something. Of pride that she was improvising so well. Yeah. Pride. That’s what he’d go with.

“We’ll leave you to it, then,” Morowski said, eyeing Fixer in a lecherous in a way that made Lex grin, and Deacon bristle internally. “Keep the good stuff coming and you might just get something more than freelance work out of us yet.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said,. “Maybe when I’m not fuckin’ busy.”

“Wonder who’s payin’who,” one of the mercs said as they passed. Deacon ignored them, cupping Fixer’s face in one hand. Her jaw tensed as he tilted her chin up, watching her lips. His fingers tightened a bit and she whimpered, and then he kissed her, hard and open mouthed, and the little moan she made sent another shock down his spine, throat constricting. What he was feeling definitely wasn’t pride now. Something else. He decided not to look for the word.

Her hands tightened around his hips, pulling him closer and Deacon heard the clatter of boots as the men trooped past, trying to watch them go from the corner of his eye.

And then she growled a little, demanding his attention and it wasn’t just good kiss anymore but a… well, a _something_. A _really_ good kiss. Like, a super great one. One of those detailed, gratioust kisses from those shitty romance stories in _Live & Love_. He felt like his shirt should be half open, flapping in the breeze, with Fixer half bent in his arms, swooning. Instead she she hummed and bit his lower lip, making him exhale sharply, a wave of heat flushing his face.

“Easy tiger,” he whispered, pulling away. He should probably stop calling her that. He kept his voice low enough that it would just sound like a sweet nothing to anyone not also right up against his lips. “We’re under cover, here. Not trying to get _under_ the covers…”

The look she gave him, her mouth twisting in half annoyance, half amusement reassured him. A glimpse of Fixer—reminding him that they were just playing at kissing. Hungry lovers who couldn’t quite keep it in their pants. Her lipstick smudged, lips swollen from their hard kisses...she looked also quite _unlike_ Fixer. And though he didn’t strictly _need to,_ it was better safe than sorry when it came to selling their cover, so he kissed her again, softer, sweeter this time. She made another noise, one that was slightly too sexy to be strictly legal and he shuddered, his heart and stomach trying to switch places.

 _Fuck_.

Deacon backed her towards the door to their room, stooping, head tilting down to get better access to her mouth as it moved against his. He covered her sweet little noises with his mouth, driving his tongue against hers. Walking her backwards without falling was one of the more difficult maneuvers he’d ever executed, more than half distracted by the way her mouth slid over his while keeping what remained of his attention on the empty hallway and the sound of the gang’s feet on the stairs.

And then the baddies were gone, and Deacon’s full attention snapped back to Fixer, who he’d managed to pin against the door with his hips while he fumbled for the keys. Her tongue swiped against his and he groaned and she made another needy little sound against his mouth.

“Almost there, tiger,” he said into her lips, as if they were _going_ somewhere. Fuck. He _really_ needed to stop calling her that. She mumbled little encouragements as he fumbled with the lock. Somehow his leg wound up between her thighs and he could feel the heat of her as she pressed down against him, and then he managed to get the key in the lock. The door swung open behind her and she fell backwards into the room, pulling him along. He nearly tripped over their tangled legs but manded to backpedal with his hands around her waist, saving her from a fall. He lurched back against the door and it slammed shut with a resounding bang, and then he had a handful of Fixer crushed against his chest, her feet half off the floor. His hat fell off, landing _somewhere_. And then she kissed him again.

She tasted good _._ Boozy, but good. Like old-world rum, and Nuka cola, and spice, and _Fixer_. Not that he’d ever imagined how she’d taste, not once, but now that he knew…his back against the door, pulling her up—oh god she was tiny. Easy to forget how tiny when she was taking out raiders with calm precision or playing chicken with mutated murder crabs. Or killing juggernaut coursers. Or saving his life. She loomed so large in his mind, but she was so soft with curves all over that filled his hands in such a way he’d never felt before.

Were his hands wandering? Yes. Yes they were. South. _Polar south_. And her mouth? Slow and hot and deep against his—

And then she pulled away, made a slow slide down his body, her blouse riding up, getting rumpled. _More_ rumpled. A delightful mess; flushed, makeup smeared, dark hair mussed, her shirt all twisted. She leaned against him, her lower belly bare and soft, pressed against his packer where his hips thrust forward towards her. Although his decoy dick wasn’t hard he knew she could feel it against her, and and he shooed away the dizzying pulse in his crotch.

He wondered vaguely if she’d be disappointed that his only stick-in-able dicks were detachable ones. If she even liked that sort of thing. It had really never mattered before. And then thought about the ways he _wouldn’t_ disappoint her, imagining for a moment the incredible noises he’d work out of her, maybe one of those little desperate little mewls she’d been making against his mouth, but louder… She wouldn’t be weird, would she? Not cruel or rejecting? Those old-worlders were weird as hell about gender sometimes, but Fixer hadn’t been, not once. She’d asked for his pronouns, never asked questions. Sometimes he wished she would ask questions.

But none of that actually mattered because he didn’t want any of that, didn’t need it, except that she felt so _good_ pressed against him that it was hard not to think about her like that...made it hard to think at all

She spoke first, staring up at him and her words broke whatever spell their improv had caused. “Think it worked?”

Deacon wasn’t sure but he thought he heard a waver in her voice.

“Yeah,” he said, a breathless few inches from her lips, still leaning down towards her. “Think so.” He’d never been so grateful for sunglasses in all his life. His hands still curled at the small of her back, thumbs brushing bare skin, softer than it has any right to be. He found the hem of her shirt and tugged it down and she laughed a little, leaning back to look at him.

And then she snickerd.

“That bad, huh?” he said.

“No, no. Your technique is fine. Fairly good, in fact...” Fixer emerged again, entirely technical and a bit formal even through the slur of her speech.

“Only _fairly_ good? That’s…”

She pushed at his shoulders and he laughed, a little breathless. Oh god, she was blushing.

“I—You’ve got lipstick on you,” she managed through a laugh. Her hands braced against his chest, fingers curling into his shirt. She hasn’t made a move to extract herself from his hands, which had gone still on the small of her back.

“Ah,” he said. _Don’t be fucking awkward_. _So fucking awkward..._ “I’m usually a fan of the look, but I’ve gotta go after these guys… Covered in lipstick is _definitely_ going to mark me as the guy who was mackin’ on the pretty lady in the hallway.” He finally managed to drop his arms from her waist, and then he tilted his head and said something which he dimly realized was entirely stupid. “Little help?”

She nodded, completely serious and efficient, so very Fixer, and raised her hand to his mouth, cupping his chin with curled fingers.

The first swipe of her thumb across his lower lip was all business, rubbing at a smear of red. She made another swipe and her knuckles brushed his cheek. Deacon inhaled sharply at the touch, an involuntary shiver sending goosebumps down his arms. His lips parted as she traced the curve of his upper lip and then dragged her finger across his lower lip and he was pretty sure she wasn’t wiping away the lipstick any more. His breath hitched as he exhaled, dragging his lips across her fingers, his tongue daring a tiny taste of the salt and sweet of her skin. She whimpered and heat flooded his belly and they stared at each other for a moment until her fingers slipped down to trace his jaw and he wasn’t sure who started it but they were kissing again, hot and hungry.

She rose up on her toes and he shuddered another breath, softening the kiss, mouth teasing, their tongues sliding slow and easy.

“Okay,” he said, pulling away. “Not—” _fuck_. He kissed her again and pulled away again— “actually helping.” Another kiss, their lips just brushing— “I’ve gotta go, and you—” she made a soft little sound against his mouth and he dimly recalled that— “ _you_ are drunk.”

“Mmmhmm?” She purred at him. “And?”

_Oh god...did she actually want..._

_She was drunk_. Maybe she didn’t care now, but she definitely would in the morning. And if she wasn’t drunk none of this would be happening. She wasn’t usually this… whatever this was. And _he_ cared now. And it was completely wrong of him to chase her lips with his when she pulled away a bit but he did, kissing her one last time. Definitely the last time.

“ _Ahhh_.” He exhaled. “ _And_...” He swallowed hard and cleared his throat, putting his hands on her shoulders to extract himself, walking her backwards. He looked around the room like the Gunners might pop up from behind the couch. “I _think_ the coast is clear.”

“Oh,” she said, eyes widening as she took a step back on her own, swaying gently in the middle of the floor. “Right.”

The game was over. Whatever game it was that they’d been playing. She swallowed a laugh when she looked at him again. “ _Méchants_.”

”Uuuh…?”

“‘ _Il a mauvais hommes,’?”_ She clucked her tongue at him. “Your grammar? Almost good. But _méchants._ Not ‘ _mauvais hommes’. Il y a_ _méchants._ _”_

“Ah,” he said. “ _Il y a_ _méchants_ _._ ”

“ _Bon_ ,” she said, beaming at him, and something hungry and worrisome ached in his core. He turned away and went for his bag. He grabbed jacket and a hat, wiping away the smears of red on his face with a rag. What he should have done in the first place. _Little help? God, Deacon. Fucking idiot. Taking advantage of her like that._

He pulled on the jacket and jammed the hat on his head, changed his shiny gangster shoes into his dirty boots, and moments later he was just another anonymous drifter, ready to do his damn job.

He heard the creak of bedsprings and Fixer groan, and he glanced towards her, sprawled out like the drunk she was. And then he went for the door.

“Deacon?” Her voice held something tentative.

He paused with a hand on the doorknob, looking back at her with a lump in his throat. She was going to...shit. Man, this was gonna be awkward. She sat up a bit.

“Something I can do for you?” he asked.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier.” She propped herself up on her arms, peering at him in the gloom.

He blinked behinds his sunglasses. Not what he was expecting, but...okay. “What, about my dancing?”

“Ah. No. I didn’t say—uh. That was. Fine. I’m sorry. About...H2.” She spoke haltingly, and Deacon wasn’t sure if she was struggling with an apology or wrestling with words just because she was drunk. “And how I spoke to you. About how packages are handled. I lost my. My temper.”

Deacon huffed a little, searching for any hurt or annoyance that he’d felt earlier in the day, and came up empty handed. She’d been right after all. And none of that anger had been directed at _him_ directly anyway, though he felt perhaps it should have. People argued. _And_ she was right.

“Naw, you’re good pal,” he said. “I appreciate your candor. Keeps me on my toes. Not many people can do that.”

“Okay,” she said, managing a wan little smile, and slumped back on the bed.

He grinned. “Besides, the Railroad needs you.”

She hummed and Deacon shut the door behind him and took a deep breath. His back hit the wall and rubbed his face, his lips. Where _her_ lips had been. He felt another little surge of electric arousal shoot through his stomach, down to his core, a stupid little smile pulling at his mouth. Where—oh god. _Oh shit_. Jesus christ.

Nope.

He rested there for a spell, letting his heart do its pounding thing. And then he heard a noise. The Rexford walls were thin, centuries-old plaster and wood half crumbled already, and privacy sound privacy was nearly non-existent.

And that sound. A little...he could only call it a _moan_...from within the room he’d just left. Huh. He leaned towards the door. Was she yacking? God, how much had she had to—

Another moan, this one louder. A gasp.

Oh.

_OH._

Deacon swallowed hard, and put his ear to the door. More noises, very specific noises a little more intense than the ones she’d been making against his mouth just a few minutes ago. He swallowed a groan of his own, his hand daring to drift towards his stomach. He pressed at his pelvis, his palm hot under his jacket. Another moan from the room and his hand slipped down to palm his crotch. He really shouldn’t be listening to this but his ear glued to the door and his fingers traced the outline of the dick he was packing, and then between his legs, rocking his hand over his trousers to build some pressure.

And then he heard a breathless “ _yes_ ” and another groan and he knew _exactly_ what was happening in there and could picture it perfectly and holy shit he should _not_ be listening but he couldn’t pull himself away. He edged back towards fully aroused, frozen, unable to move except for the insistent throb of need in his dick. Clit. Whatever he wanted to call it these days. It had been a while since he’d needed to think about all that.

He let out a long, silent breath as the room beyond the door went quiet. And then he heard movement and he jerked his hand from between his legs and backed away, hoping like hell she wasn’t about to open the door. Instead he heard the sound of rummaging and her muttering in French, and then she settled again.

And then he heard a man’s voice. For a moment he wondered who the hell was in there, a spike of confusion and jealousy severing his arousal like a pair of scissors snipping a taught string.

And then he realized. Nate. A recording. A 200 year old recording. His mind flashed back to the holotape he’d found in her house right after getting the tip from the dead drop, before he’d even laid eyes on her. Shaun’s room, the vault suit in the corner, a decrepit crib in the middle, and then him, following her around like she was an interesting artifact he needed to study understand without interacting.

_Her. Sophie Deckard. Jeanne. Fixer._

And now he regretted all of it. He should have been there for her from the first.

He should _definitely_ not be listening to this.

Deacon pushed off the wall, and slunk down the stairs like a tired drifter, trying not the feel the ghost of her pressed against him, or the red of her lips, or the way she’d said sorry, or… he could make a litany of other things he wanted to remember…

And some things he wanted to forget as well, like the bitter little ball of jealousy in the pit of his stomach that she was rubbing off to her dead husband and not him after their little hallway liaison. As if he had any right.  

But he left it all at the top of the stairs. By the time he reached the ground floor landing, he was just another stranger passing through, shoulders hunched, looking for his next meal.

And under the guise of drifter, Deacon had a to-do list a mile long. Drop intel in the nearest dead drop and radio for pickup. Find out what room the Gunners had been packed into like clowns in a Converga, and see if they’d left anything interesting behind. Find a way to get the invitation back into Marowski’s office so he wouldn’t get suspicious about the party. Steal the HalluciGen cannister back from Fred Allen so he wouldn’t contributing to the Commonwealth’s drug problem simply because he wanted a scrap of intel.

Looked like he was going to be working late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: OH LORDY IT FINALLY HAPPENED. Pretty sure Deacon has a bad case of The Feelings cuz I didn't mean for things to get this intense so soon but here we are. Also I’ve been talking with a friend and we’ve decided he’s demisexual (like both my friend and me!!) I’m a big fan of ace spectrum Deacon as well as trans Deacon, so double whammy. This slow burn was so cold it was essentially a glacier. Thanks for sticking with me through all that omg.
> 
> I’m just so pleased for them but man it’s impossible not to pack my smooches with a lot of feels.
> 
> ALSO I got a job! Temporary, but it's just what I need right now and I'm so stoked and relieved. Not sure what that means for writing just yet but if things slow down I'll give y'all a heads up. :D :D :D


	19. No Way, Cupid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double whammy of a quick chapter! Hope these quick updates aren't overwhelming but I couldn't resist posting. If you've already read the previous chapter, I have added a tiny bit to the end (after Deacon leaves the room) that you might want to go back and read, for Reasons. Think of it as...DLC (aka I'm bad at planning). 
> 
> Warning for emotional whiplash? Idk I made myself sad.

**Jeanne**

The door whispered shut behind him and Jeanne fell back on the bed with a groan, the room spinning slightly, embarrassment rising to her cheeks in a hot rush. She traced her lips, fingers buzzing with nervous energy and booze.

 _Holy shit._ That kiss. Those kisses. A classic spy trick. Fake kiss. Something out of a bad comic.

Except she was drunk and horny, and her behavior was completely inappropriate.

She ran the past ten minutes over in her mind. Something fishy going on with Deacons undercover work he hadn’t yet clued her in on. Fake kiss. Kissing continued. Up against the door. In the room, her body against his, wanting his thigh back between her legs, slowly coming to the realization that she was kissing _Deacon._ Of all people.

Then they’d stopped. And then started again. Practically a tongue bath. She was going to ask him if he wanted fuck. Moments away from saying it, tracing his lips with her fingers. Gorgeous lips, the firm cupid's bow, the soft little pout of his lower lip.

Sloppy work. Sloppy kissing. _Ha_...

 _“You’ve got lipstick on you”…?_ Oh, _crisse_...

She needed to get laid. By someone who was _not_ Deacon. That was it. The answer. She’d never found a better stress relief than sex, and oh boy was she stressed. Being a horny dingbat was bound to make things weird with someone sooner or later, and of course it was going to be Deacon who got the brunt of it, considering how much time they spent together. He was sweet to humor her stupidity long enough. A little too long.

And that kiss was... _good._ Promising. Hard to end.

And completely inappropriate.

She _had_ to have other prospects than her goddamn partner. Her mind rambled through the garden of people she’d met recently who weren’t terrible.

RJ was out. He was too young, would probably get attached. He felt like a little brother.

Hancock always gave off _vibes._ According to Irma he had a reputation as a prolific lover. Jeanne was attracted to people of all genders and orientations. She could surely expand that definition to include ghouls. Hancock had his charms and she could see it… but something about him made her feel a bit insecure.

Glory? Total babe. A little jolt of interest. Possible fascination. A little bit of a crush on how badass she was. But. Like sleeping with Deacon, it would be fraternization and that was generally a Bad Idea. Title case. She’d done it before in CAAB. Everyone who was into that sort of thing slept with each other in CAAB. It usually ended badly.  

Preston. No… like RJ, he was too sweet. He was handsome as hell, but again she feared attachment. Besides, she doubted he even saw her that way.

Cait...damn. Yeah, Cait. There had been vibes down in the bar. Vibes that told her that one of them would have ended up flat on their back with the other… Hm. Yes. Definite vibes. Maybe next time… Like Hancock, the drug use bothered her, but the dance had been nice. Handsy, but nice.

Speaking of hands… her own wandered her body as she thought about who in the Commonwealth she’d possibly fuck. Jeanne undressed slowly, still on her back. Her shirt came off first, then her bra. She wriggled out of her jeans and her hands wandered down between her legs. She felt a warm lurch in her stomach when the thought of soft lips, his seeking tongue, his little shiver when she’d nipped his neck in the hall—

 _Nope._ Bad Fixer.

Think of someone else. Something else. Cait and her cocky reverence. Big green eyes. Biceps. Glory’s reluctant smile. Jeanne’s hands slipped under the waistband of her underwear, and her fantasies rebelled. Deacon might come back through the door at any moment, and she grinned, wondering what he’d say if he found her sprawled on the bed with her hands between her legs.

 _Really left an impression, huh?_ That drawl. She’d gasp, humiliated. He’d smile, take a step towards the bed.

Her fingers made slow circles in the wet heat of her cunt—yeah, she was wet already, wet from before, from the hard press of lips and his lean body grinding against hers—and she arced her back, palming her breast and peaking a nipple with rough fingers till it hurt. She stifled a moan, her cunt tightening against her .

 _Want some help?_ Maybe he laughed. He had a good laugh. A lot of _different_ laughs. At this point she was mostly able to translate them. He’d laugh, and it was affectionate and amused and—a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth and her fingers sped up.

 _That’s it, Fix—_ she could almost hear him. She gasped, body trembling on the edge of an orgasm. _Come on, Tiger._ _You wanna come?_

“Yes,” she whispered, breathy and desperate, and then she did come, heat arching from her fingers, waves of pent-up need and desire flooding her belly, her core. She groaned through the slow spasms, sinking back down.

When it was done she lay there for a few minutes, shivering from a think sheen of sweat across her chest and belly, the room spinning as the booze in her system reasserted itself.

 _What are you_ doing?

Her hands jerked away from her body and she pressed them flat on the bed. The room lurched as she sat up, looking around to make sure Deacon wasn’t really there. That it was just her imagination. It _was_ just her imagination. She never used to have that good of an imagination.

She got up and stumbled over to her bag. She found a t-shirt and some loose pants, a sweater, and bundled up, sniffing at herself for being so foolish. She dug through her bag, pulling out some purified water and jerky and some snack cakes, anything to cushion her impending hangover. Clothes and boxes of ammo and a few grenades spilled from her pack and she let them fall. She’d clean up tomorrow. Her bag of holotapes clattered to the floor and she swore.

_Shit._

Nate…

Jeanne rose slowly, her head pounding with the sudden shock of too many feeling rolling around in the stew of her drunkenness, plunging lower, to places... Too many feelings about kissing. Stupid...

“ _Nate…”_ She murmured his name like an apology. “ _Crisse la, J’suis...tellement désolé, m-ma moitié_ …”

She stumbled back to bed, her water and snacks forgotten, and scrambled for her pip boy, which Deacon had apparently put it on the bedside table earlier that evening. Ever thoughtful.

She slammed the tape home and crawled into bed, holding the computer in her lap. She stared at the screen for a moment where the words “Hi Honey” blinked at her, and then hit the play button.

The tape squealed with feedback, and Nate laughed. His voice crackled over the speakers, cooing to Shaun, and she inhaled sharply as she listened to fumbled with the recorder. It was so good to hear his voice. So...oh, Nate.

She curled up around the pip boy and laid down on the mattress, hugging the computer like it was something she had to protect, treasure.

“ _Hi honey. Listen_...” Shaun made another noise in the background, and Jeanne choked on a tiny sob.

She listened. His words fell on her like rocks, or petals—she couldn’t decide. His voice, so sweet, full of love that she didn’t deserve. A good mother—she laughed at that. She couldn’t even hold on their her child. The best year...a year of healing and peace, at least for them. And they would keep fighting. Together. Just because she was in America now didn’t mean that she’d lost. There was nothing she could have done better.

“ _Il’st si bon d'entendre t’voix_ ,” she whispered to him. “ _Toi et Shaun_ . _Toi.._ ”

~~~

Jeanne groaned as consciousness asserted itself, accompanied by a violent hangover. The light stabbed her eyes, even dim as it was coming through the fully drawn curtains.

She needed water. She rolled over under her blanket—that was weird… She hadn't fallen asleep under her blanket last night—when she saw a carton of water on the crate by her bed, along with her pip boy, which she was pretty sure she’d fallen asleep with last night.

Nate… it ached less somehow, now that she’d listened to him. She could remember his voice again, and it was bittersweet in a way that felt more sweet than bitter. Deer hide, run the right way through her fingers.

_Okay, Nate..._

She huffed, looking around and saw a pair of bare feet sticking out over the arm of the couch. She stifled a laugh when she remembered Deacons Two Left Feet story from last night and noted that he had left one and a right one. Such tall tales.

Her face burned with sudden heat as she pieced together the events of the night. Pip-boy on the table… he must have found her curled around the damn pip-boy with the sad holotape from her dead husband. Put a blanket over her.

Embarrassment flared, adding to the headache banging away at her forehead, but she couldn’t deny the flare of disappointment that he’d ended up on the couch instead of in bed with her. Some human contact would have been nice. She crushed the disappointment like a bug under her heel and took a sip of water.

_Calme toi, Jeannie._

Deacon stirred and sat up slowly, yawning. She so rarely woke first, and raised a brow at the sight of him without his sunglasses, brief as it was. Strong brow, those ginger eyebrows, his eyes deep and blue even half fogged with sleep. A moment later the sunglasses covered half his face again and he grinned at her like the Cheshire Cat.

“How you feeling there, hotshot?” he said, stifling another yawn.

She groaned and lay back down, staring at the ceiling, her mind racing with strategies for dealing with last night. She could pretend it was totally normal that they’d continued making out after the door shut behind him. Just fun and games. Which it was, really.She could ignore it entirely. She could address it head on. Or… _oh_. She’d been drunk. Very drunk. She could take a leaf from Deacon’s book and lie. Pretend she didn’t remember a thing.

“What happened last night?” she said, the words stiffer than she would have liked. “Sort of blacked out…”

She looked over at him and Deacon flashed her one of his infuriating grins. “Do you remember dancing on a table at the Rail?”

“...no.”

So they were going to have a lie-off. Fun.

“Well...then you proposed to Magnolia, took out a band of attacking raiders while screaming...what was it? _Kowabunga_? And then we made out for a bit. Pretty good night, overall.”

“We did _not_ make out for a bit. You’re such a liar,” she said, her cheeks burning.

“That’s news to me, boss. Honest.” He grinned at her again and she wondered if he bought her lie and was relieved to go along with it, or if he knew she was full of shit and was making it easy on her.

“But listen,” he went on, sitting up straighter and casting around for his boots. “I got a jump on the trafficking thing last night—”  

She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. “Now?”

“—but it can wait until you’ve had something to eat and gotten all the morning bear growls out of your system. And we’re somewhere the walls don’t have ears. I’ve got a plan. You’re definitely gonna love it.”

“Something tells me I won’t,” she mumbled.

“Com’on boss, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I left it down in the Rail last night,” she said, staring up at the ceiling through her threadbare blanke. “Along with my dignity. Did Magnolia say yes?”

“‘Fraid not,” he said with a shake of his head. “Better luck next time.”

“Thanks,” she groaned, and rolled over to stare at the wall until either head stopped pounding or her face stopped burning. She wasn’t sure which would come first.

~~~

Fixer squinted into the Goodneighbor morning,  sun bounced merily off windows and bore directly into her eyes. Her head pounded fiercely, her throat thick and dry no matter how much water she drank. And then there was the lingering sense of shame from last night, clinging to her like its own sort of emotional hangover, on top of the physical one.

 _Easy, tiger,_ he’d murmured into her lips, making her shiver. She wondered if he knew how turned on she’d been. Maybe he’d heard her…

She dragged herself through through the main thoroughfare, ignoring the little shiver the memory caused. She’d been forward, prurient. _Needy_. At least they could both pretend that she didn’t remember. Better that way. Even if she could still hear his voice echoing around in her head.

She managed to get her blush under control by the time she got to Daisy’s store.

“Ain’t you a sight,” Daisy said, squinting at her. “You need a cup of coffee, STAT.”

Fixer perked up at the word ‘coffee’, and grinned at Daisy’s use of medical jargon. “You’ve got coffee _?_ ” Her eyebrows flew skyward.

Daisy shook her head over her shoulder as she bustled around, pouring a mysterious powder into a cup and setting a kettle of water to boil on her stove. “Not the real stuff. Razorgrain coffee. It’s got gourd, melon, and ash blossom. And a few secret wake-up ingredients of my own.” Daisy winked.

“Just as long as there’s no abraxo, I think it should be fine.” That earned her a scoff, and Fixer wrinkled her nose. “Really, sounds like a tea I’ve been trying to make,” She kept testing the tea on Deacon, but if there was a way to make a wake-up blend that might serve as actual coffee… “Maybe we can trade recipes some time.”

Daisy’s hum was noncommittal. “Maybe, maybe. Don’t want you to put me out of business.” The ghoul’s black eyes pulled Jeanne in for a moment, the shimmering, oil-sick shine catching the light and making her look catlike and mischievous, until the kettle started a shrill whistle and she whisked away to make the coffee.

She returned with the steaming tin cup and a box of Dandy Boys. Fixer slid some caps across the bar and they disappeared in a flash.

“Have a nice night?” Daisy asked. “Heard you were tearing it up in the Rail with those troublemaker friends of yours.”

Jeanne groaned and closed her eyes, willing the throbbing in her head to quit throbbing. She wondered if mentats were good for hangovers. Or shame-overs. Were those a thing?

“Any chance you’ve made it to the library yet?” asked Daisy.

Fixer shook her head, shooing away the thoughts of the night before with a twist of her mouth. “Sorry. I’ve been… occupied. There’s been a lot going on.”

Daisy’s black eyes grew gentle, crinkling at the corners. "Don't you worry about it dear. It's just my pre-war nostalgia makin' me all wistful."

“I suppose you’ve got more to worry about than 200-years-overdue library books.” Daisy gave another sigh, one Fixer now pinpointed as her nostalgic one.

She gave the grain coffee a tentative sniff. It smelled decent enough. Took a sip and made an uncertain little sound. “It’s almost like the real thing,” she said. Almost. But _crisse_ , what she wouldn’t do for a box of timbits and a double double. Little doughnut holes dipped in over-sweet coffee...

Daisy smiled. “I miss coffee almost as much as I miss libraries,” she said. “My razorgrain juice will fix that hangover right up, though. Fresh as a—”  
  
“Daisy.” Fixer actually laughed, wishing she hadn’t because it felt like someone was pushing their thumbs up against the inside of her eyeballs.

Daisy grinned at her, nodding in approval. “Yep. You’ve got a smudge of lipstick, dear. Right—” Daisy indicated on corner of her own lipless mouth— “there.”

Fixer groaned and scrubbed at her mouth. Was she never going to be rid of of this damn makeup?

“Great,” she mumbled. “Thanks for the coffee.” She with her handful of apple snacks.

Daisy waved back. “Don’t you be a stranger,” she called.

A few minutes later, Fixer ambled down the staircase into the basement of the Old State House. Deacon said he’d meet her there once she got herself out of bed, and sure enough, he sat on a crate, smoking.

He perked up from his slouch with a smile when he saw her, stubbing the half smoked cigarette out on the wall and tossing it aside. She felt a stab of annoyance that he was smoking. He’d almost died a few weeks ago and yet there he was with the deathwish again. Sometimes the thought of him bleeding out, gasping for air while she worked steadily to save his life intruded on her. Like now. The way she shook after, with all the adrenaline coursing through her body, the fear that he’d die and then she’d be alone. Again. And she wasn't sure what she'd do if she lost Deacon. She wasn't sure if she could take one more gaping hole in her heart.

The thought made her dry, sticky mouth feel like sandpaper. She took a sip of coffee to try and ease the ache, but it was hard to swallow with the lump in her throat. God, hangovers made her such an emotional wreck.

“This is charming,” she said, waving away the smoke and her errant morbid thoughts like those too hung in the air. She peered around the dank hole in the ground, eyed the the holding cell, a typical steel bars affair which stood open and empty except for a human skull. “Hancock’s dungeon? I was thinking there would be more whips and chains.”

Deacon’s grin widened and Fixer felt a rush of heat rise in her cheeks.  

“You can always submit a request,” he said. “Hancock’s got a reputation for being open minded and accommodating.”

“Okay,” she huffed, a crooked smile stealing across her face in spite of herself. “But why are we in a dungeon?”

“One of a few places in Goodneighbor where the walls don’t have ears,” Deacon said. His kneed bounced a little while he talked, fingers unlacing and lacing as he spoke.

“Right. So.” Her brain swam. Told her she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and have Deacon make jokes at her all day, while she snaked on Fancy Lads and apples. Maybe he’d read out loud. She could laugh at his bad French. Though he _was_ getting better.

“This plan,” Fixer said, ignoring the demands of her lazy brain. She took a bite of honey-sweet apple, ignoring the tiny click of her geiger warning her of the rads she was ingesting. “The one I’m not going to like? Let’s hear it.”

“Nah, you’re gonna love it,” he said. “Just a couple of gal pals planning an evening out on the town.”

“Gal pals?” Now he was just _trying_ to give her a headache.

He nodded. “I thought we could play dress up. We’re going undercover.”

Fixer’s eyebrows climbed by degrees as Deacon filled her in on his discoveries from last night: that Marowski was the synth trafficking kingpin, and he had an insider in the Institute. Fixer’s mind raced ahead of Deacon’s intel. Synth slave ring, straight from the Institute. When she got inside she could end the person responsible. Assuming she got inside. Assuming they would let her see any part of the Institute other than a cell. Assuming she could first get Shaun. Priority. Of course.

But this whole “synths aren’t people” think was really starting to piss her off. Even the Railroad didn’t know how to handle snyths. Not that she’d handled the whole H2 situation very well yesterday. Deacon was so good at pretending everything was fine she wondered if he was still sore at her.

And he’d been busy once she's passed out. After the...masterbation. And the holotape. A pang of guilt stirred in her gut that she hadn’t been able to help him last night. Selfish, indulgent. And paying for it now. But he didn’t seem the least bit affected by their little fraternization episode last night, or her lowered capacity. Nothing had changed. That was good. A relief.

Her mind crawled back to work, churning through the intel. “That’s the plan?” Fixer said. Her nose wrinkled as she took another gulp of coffee. “Go undercover and pump the man for intel and...? Take him out?” Her tone went flat, eyes flinty. “You’re right. I _love_ it.”

Deacon chucked. “If we have to. Knowing who your enemies are is half the battle. The other half is knowing when to keep them alive. Or not.”

“I know. I just thought I’d grow out of this murder thing. Put that behind me.” She was quiet for a moment. Kellogg, the courser, now Marowski. Killing people who got in her way seemed to be something she’d never be rid of. And then she laughed a little, remembering how she and Nate had gotten acquainted. “I almost killed Nate when I first met him, you know.”

Deacon quirked an eyebrow, ginger over the top of his glasses. There was something disarming about him being a red-head. Like she forgot until he raised an eyebrow and then the realization charmed her in spite of herself. “That sounds like a story,” he said, a little grin lingering at the corners of his mouth.

Fixer shrugged as if it was a very normal way to meet a future spouse. Maybe it was, these days. Or even back then. Considering her circumstances all around…

“Nate was being nosy. Asking questions around the squats, wanted to meet with members of the ‘resistance.’ He wasn’t subtle. I thought he was an American spy, trying to infiltrate our work with refugees.” Her gut twisted a little as she remembered the sound of Nate’s voice, a little distorted from the ancient recording, telling her how much he loved her, how _proud_ he was of her.

“He must have been something, to overcome your stabby urges,” he said. “Though you did almost stab _me_ when we first met.”

Fixer laughed a little. “He was sweet. I was glad I didn’t have to kill him.” _Or you, in hindsight._

“Glad enough that you married him,” Deacon said. He clasped his hands and leaned forward. “He sounds almost worthy of you.” She couldn’t tell if he met her eyes or not.

Fixer blinked, opening her mouth to say something only to find she was at a loss for words. She fumbled a moment, her throat closing up again. Nate had always been too good for _her._ He’d never killed anyone. Not that he’d ever needed to. He fought in different ways. Ways Jeanne never bothered to learn. Not when she was Saint. Not even after.

But Nate had always said the same thing Deacon had just uttered. Worthy...

“I—ah.” She swallowed hard. Did Deacon really think so highly of her? It was a sweet thing to say. But he was flattering her again, had to be. But it didn’t make sense. He didn’t _need_ to convince her that they should work together. They were a team now. He didn’t need to—

“I don’t think I was worthy of… It wasn’t about worth. I don’t think.” She thought about Nate, his smile. Now that she’d heard his tape she could remember his voice again. She hadn’t even realized she’d forgotten. If it was about worth… she wasn’t. “But thank you. For saying so. Even if you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong. We all need a bit of validation now and then.” His smirk widened by a degree and Fixer looked away, charmed into a smile. “Except me. I already know how great I am.”

She opened her mouth to argue with him, that he was pretty damn insecure and kept everyone one-thousand kilometers away.

Deacon shook his head, holding up a finger like the professional avoider he was. “Back to the whole murder planning thing, I see it like this. If we can get the Institute name out of him, he dies. End of synth trafficking. For now. If we don’t get the name, he lives, and we try again.”

“Poor guy doesn’t stand a chance,” Deacon said. “Looks like we’re going to a New Year’s party.”

Time exerted its self suddenly, like becoming aware of the second hand of an analog clock. The insesent ticking she’d never stop hearing now that she noticed it. “Is it already New Years?” Fixer rubbed a hand over her face, sighing.

“Yep.” Deacon nodded. “Well make an occasion out of it. Gal pals, like I said. We’ll get dressed up. Hair, makeup, the whole shebang.”

“Yay, makeup. Yay, murder,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose like she could squeeze the headache out of her face. “My favorite things. I’m too hungover for this, Dee.”

Deacon’s expression shifted, flashing with spurise before he smiled, smug and crooked. “Well, you can have a hangover buddy in Hancock. I’m sure he has some remedies. We’ve got to talk to him anyway.”

“Hancock?” Fixer frowned. “Why?”

Deacon stood and Fixer followed. “Gotta ask the king of Goodneighbor if we can off one of the major players in his game.” He started up the stairs. “We’re gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.”

Fixer shook her head. At this point she wouldn’t put it past Deacon if he’d been a vault dweller himself at some point. Way too much old-world knowledge to be as much of a consummate nerd as he was. “You were either cryogenically frozen for 200 years, or you’ve got a stash of old world holotapes somewhere, I swear it.”

Deacon flashed her an infuriating grin. “Yes,” he said. 

She took a swing at his arm, and he dodged, skipping up a few steps with his longer legs. Fixer made an exasperated noise and decided to give up on fighting her hangover, and Deacon's antics entirely. 


	20. Gal Pals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I’m alive! Here’s an extra long chapter to make up for the delay. Extra long chapter also means harder to edit so if you seen any continuity errors or unfinished sentences, feel free to point them out. <3 Also I'm not sure how its possible for my chapter titles to whiplash so hard from pretentious to stupid, but. Yeah.
> 
> _*A/N: I added another section to the previous chapter because I got overly excited and posted it too soon. Needed more to set up this Marowski subplot I'm now regretting, but hey. I try. If you read chapter 19 before 7/30, you can go back and give the second, newly added section a read if you like. It's slightly important continuity wise. Also there are feelings. Think of it as DLC?_

 

Deacon

“So, Lex is finally makin’ his big move, huh?” Hancock cracked his neck and flicked the ash gathering on the cherry of his cigarette into a nearby ashtray.

Deacon leaned his elbows on his knees, shifting a bit in the old armchair up in Hancock’s office.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “Lex is sadly no longer with us.”

“Can’t say I was sorry to see him go. Guy was kinda an asshole.” Hancock smirked at Deacon, exhaling a puff of smoke. “Why should I let you off the cornerstone of my empire?”

Fixer shifted with an impatient huff, and Deacon let his eyes dart her way without moving his head.

She looked rough as he’d ever seen her, curled up in an armchair with her feet tucked under her.   She stared from him to Hancock and back as they spoke, seeming to hold only the most vague interest. Like her thoughts took her a million miles away. Probably thinking about her husband. The tape.

Had she really blacked out last night? Did she really not remember? It didn’t make sense. Fixer was brutally honest, not afraid of who she was or what she wanted. Medic. Revolutionary. Crack shot. Mom. Widow. Sentimental drunk. Really excellent kisser.

He knew _who_ she was. But now he had no idea what she _wanted_.

Deacon dragged his eyes away from Fixer, back to Hancock. It took a little longer to drag his thoughts away from her too. Back to work. Even if Fixer _was_ work.

“Marowski needs to go,” Deacon said, giving no hint that his brain had just gone on a completely unnecessary, Fixer-related tangent. “Trust me when I say he’s messing with stuff you want no part of.”

“Yeah? Like chems? Cuz I’m a huge part’a that.” Hancock flipped the lid on tin of mentats and popped two of the chalky pellets in his mouth, rolling them on his tongue around the butt of his cigarette. He held out the tin to Fixer, and Deacon’s eyebrows rose as she hesitated and then  took one, popping it into her mouth. He twitched in annoyance. Chems were always bad news. And Fixer? Partaking? That hangover must be something. Maybe she did really black out last night.

Deacon waved Hancock away when the ghoul offered him the tin as well.

“Buzzkill,” muttered Hancock.

Deacon let his annoyance prickle as he examined his nails, words tart. “Marowski's gonna be the bigger buzzkill if you don’t gimme an ear on this.”

Hancock rubbed the side of his withered head with a grin. “Not sure I have any ears left to give.”

Deacon leaned back into the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Looks like we’re at an impasse then.”

Fixer made an exasperated noise, looking between Deacon and Hancock for a moment. She clenched the little mentat between her teeth and crunched down on it, sucking before she spoke.  

“He’s getting involved in slavery,” she said. She sat up a bit from her slouch. “He’s got an insider in the Institute and we’re going to get a name and then he’s going to die.”

Deacon cleared his throat, shooting her an annoyed look.

The cigarette dropped from Hancock’s mouth onto his lap,  eyes going wide. “Aw fuck,” He fumbled for the smoke and stuck it back in his mouth, patting down his coat and brushing the embers from his lap.

“Why didn’t ya say so? Institute connections?” Hancock’s eyes narrowed again as he glanced at Deacon. “That sorta thing ain’t allowable in my town.”

Fixer shrugged. “It’s not really allowable anywhere, in my opinion.” She examined her nails with interest for a moment before looking up, her expression mild as razorgrain porridge.

“So, slaver. What’s the plan? I got my girl Fara ready to go any time—”

Her eyes grew flinty. “We need intel first. Let us handle it.”

Hancock laughed. “The Railroad’s steppin’ up. _Finally._ I can assume the slaves in questions are synths?”

Fixer’s mild expression hardened a little, and Deacon cleared his throat. He did _not_ want to be discussing Railroad work with Hancock. Not on such explicit terms, anyway.

“I don’t care how or why,” Hancock said, gravel in his throat. “I’ll get my people in place to pick up Markowski's slack, and you do what you need to do. Neither of you strike me as the assassination types, but what do I know?”

Fixer uncrossed her arms. “Not a lot, Hancock,” she said.

“Fine. Do what needs doing. You have my blessin’.” He grinned. “Take the fucker down.”

A few hours later, Deacon and Fixer settled into the attic of the Old State House, which Hancock had loaned them for the two days he and Fixer would spend in Goodneighbor before New Years. Cait would be up eventually, too, because Fixer was apparently now her boss, and that apparently meant she could be useful to this little endeavor. He would just go with it.

Now Deacon sat cross legged on the floor, leaning against an old couch with a pair of trousers in his lap, hemming them for Fixer.

Fixer lounged behind him, sprawled on her back with an arm flung over her forehead. Hungover and relaxed from the mentats, she’d been unusually blithe and detached all afternoon as they tried on clothes and discussed best methods for infiltration, intelligence gathering, and termination.

She shifted behind him curling around herself so she could watch him sew, and Deacon tried not to think about how if he leaned his head back he could rest it on her knee. Instead he took off his his sunglasses and set them aside so his old person eyes could see his tiny stitches in the dim light. He squinted down at his task, needle plunging in and out of the black fabric, eyes following black thread like a lifeline, giving him something to do with his hands, something mindless for his brain to do besides _think_.

“Where did all this stuff come from, anyway?” Fixer asked through a yawn.

The stuff in question was a jumbled pile of gear and clothes he’d dragged from his safehouse while Fixer was still asleep. Now it lay in the middle off the floor. So far they’d managed to find Fixer a pair of pants she felt would be suitable for a joint gangster party/assassination attempt. As for his own disguise, Deacon was still mulling it over. He’d have to get as far away from Lex as he possibly could to avoid getting clocked my Marowski. Maybe that rose pink dress... And Fixer still needed a top. And a jacket. And shoes… And Cait would need some distinctive armor.

“Robbed a museum while you were napping,” he replied instead. “Would have been easier if I’d had my partner, but I guess we all get our sick days. The Railroad’s got a great benefits package.”

“Mmm,” she said. “I’m not sure I would have been much assistance. Hancock is more the ghoul to ask for help with historical reenactment. That seems to be his… _j’ne sais quoi._ ” She struggled for a few moments to find the words, which was pretty typical when trying to sum up Hancock— “His _thing_.”  

Deacon snorted at her flair for words. “Well, job’s done now, and we’ve got real work to do. You gonna lay there all day, or help me finish these disguises for the big party?” He checked the hem to make sure his stitches were indeed tiny and still evenly spaced.

“Lay here all day,” she said. “Sick day, remember?” She reached down and snagged his sunglasses from the floor. “Besides, it’s nice having someone dress me. Takes out all the guesswork.”

Dress her… _Christ_ , was she even listening to herself? The mentats were rolling through her system now no doubt. She either had no idea how close they’d come to _un-_ dressing last night, or she was being a shameless flirt. Or both. Neither. Fuck, he had no idea.

He glanced over his shoulder as she pushed the sunglasses up her nose and smiled at him, lenses winking even in the dim light. His gut lurched at the sight of her, all loose and sleepy, hair uncombed. It was getting long, almost to her shoulders now, after two months out in the wasteland. She brushed a dark lock away from her face and then settled on her back with her arms crossed over her stomach, her head tilted slightly towards him.

She sighed. “Much better. Far too bright in here.”

“That’s a good look for you, Fix,” he said. It was. Also, weird. Seeing someone else wearing his glasses. But she looked. Good. “We could be twinsies. The too-cool-for-school gang.”

“I thought we were the Death Bunnies,” she said with a pout, raising an eyebrow over the rim of his shades.

He huffed a little laugh, pulling the next stitch. “I could find you some bunny ears, too. Bunnies _are_ cool.”

“No thanks to the bunny ears. But I _have_ been looking for another pair like the sunglasses I saw at Back Street a few weeks ago. Round ones with the big white frames.”

She flopped back down with a sigh. The movement stirred the air and he caught a faint hint of the smell of her, the same as last night but fainter, with less booze. Still, the sweet low notes of warm skin. Leather. Sweat. And—

“I’ll keep an eye out for ‘em,” he said. He knew just what she was talking about because he’d pocketed the very pair.

“Try these on again,” he said, tying off the hem and cutting the excess thread with his pocket knife. He tossed the trousers back to Fixer and she huffed at him as they crumpled into a heap in her lap.   

Footfalls announced someone coming down the hall. From the lazy drag of leather soles, Deacon guessed it was Cait.

Deacon reached for his glasses but they weren’t on the floor where he’d put them. He groped for them with a jolt of panic and then Fixer touched his back and he jumped.

“Here,” Fixer said, her voice as soft as her hand resting on his shoulder.

He reached up and his fingers brushed hers, and the frames of his glasses, and he remembered belatedly that she’d been wearing them the whole time. He grabbed them, slipped them on his face, and not moment later Cait peered around the door.

“My, don't ya' look cozy.”  Cait grinned at them and kicked the door shut behind her. “So what’s this super secret thing Hancock told me you needed me for?”

Fixer sat up, plopping her bare feet on the floor next to Deacon. He didn’t have to see her to know she was grinning. “Ever been a bodyguard, Cait?” Fixer stood up with her newly shortened pants in hand and wandered over to slip behind the curtain that served as a changing room.

“Once or twice,” Cait replied, throwing herself down into a sagging armchair. “Why, got a body needs guardin’?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice muffled. “Mine.”

Cait smirked, eyebrows waggling as she glanced at Deacon. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to infiltrate anything with anyone, and now he had not one, but _two_ variables to deal with. If facepalming was a thing he did, he’d be doing it.

~~~

Two hours until they’d start their little operation, Deacon sat on a stool in front of dresser with a cracked mirror, a rag, and a bowl of soapy water at his knee. He dragged his straight razor across the side of his head and then wiped the blade on the cloth.

“So, let’s go over this one more time,” he said as he cleaned the blade again.

Fixer made a sound of agreement from behind the curtain where she changed into her disguise. “I’m Diana Simone. I’m an investor from the Capital Wasteland, specializing in business expansion. Not a slaver. Not exactly… _not_ a slaver.”

Deacon paused in his shaving, wiping his blade again. “But not _not_ a slaver. Where is the big slave-trading hub?” 

“Paradise Falls. Where they...” there was a long pause.

“And what they do there won’t bother Diana one bit.” Deacon leaned forward and made another pass with the razor. “You can’t sound like the thought is making you nauseous.”  

“I’ve _got_ it,” she snapped. He heard the rustle of fabric and then there were a few moments of quiet. “I’m still Fixer, for the moment.”

“Can you play up your accent?” he asked. “That way you can say you’re from ‘south.’”

“But my accent is from north.”

“ _He_ won’t know that.” Deacon frowned at his reflection, making note that he’d need to darken his eyebrows to brown. “Just as long as he thinks you’re not born and raised in the Capital Wasteland he won’t think it’s too weird if you’re not familiar with everything down there. Besides, it looks cool if you’ve traveled through multiple commonwealths. Makes you look badass. Can you do the accent?”

“The question is can I _undo_ this one. I made myself sound more anglophone when I moved to Boston.” Her tone prickled.

Fixer peered around the curtain and Deacon’s razor froze halfway to the rag as he glanced at her warped reflection in the mirror. She wore a deep red blouse that was too low cut to be anything but silatious, and flowing, wide legged trousers he’d hemed yesterday. Very classy, all around. A high femme, ‘take no prisoners’ look that would have lesser men begging her to step all over them in the black pumps she’d be wearing.

“This is how Quebecois sound speaking English,” she said, coming to stand behind him. Her accent was broad and strong with a new infection, swallowing her g’s and turning her t’s into softer, d sounds. “I’m going to need that mirror when you’re done.”

He grinned. “Perfect accent. You’ll be a delight. And I can shave without looking,” He shrugged, moving to set the razor down to let her use the mirror.

Fixer clicked her tongue. “No, no. I can wait. Or, let me.”

She said it so casually it hardly even registered, and then Deacon’s eyebrows climbed skyward. Let her—

His trator mouth spoke before his brain had time to shut it up. “If you think your hand is steady enough,” he said, sounding less like doubt and more like bait.

Fixer chuckled and took the razor, which his fingers were apparently more than willing to surrender. “Doctor, remember? Sutures, scalpels, straight razors,” she said, “I don’t see much difference.”

“ _I_ do,” he said, but leaned back as Fixer dipped the razor in water and flicked droppeles of soap onto the rag. “Two of those things involve some kind of slicing or poking. Razors are meant to stay _outside_ the body.”

She ghosted a palm over his head, fingers tracing the line of stubble where he’d stopped shaving. Deacon’s skin grew hot where her fingers passed and he licked his lips, managing to avoid a shudder as the first drag of the razor passes over his skull.

“Relax,” Fixer said. “I used to shave my underarms with a razor like this when I was out in the field. There are important arteries in that area. One slip and…” she forced a little whistle through her teeth. “But I never once cut myself. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

“What an image,” Deacon said, grinning at the wall while he held completely still. “You’re inspiring a lot of confined. And maybe a little fear.”

“Mmm.” She hummed, sounding pleased. “Now I don’t bother shaving. Though this is _quite_ a nice blade…”

“Please don’t use my razor to shave your pits,” he said, raising a plaintive, still-ginger eyebrow.

“No promises.” She sounded absent as she bent to her task, and Deacon’s grin faded as he relaxed into the familiar hasp of metal over skin, made strange because he wasn’t the one doing the shaving.

And then it was over as fast as she’d started. She cleaned the razor and snapped it closed, handing it to him so he could put it back in the little kit.

“Want me to do your makeup?” he asked, patting his head dry as Fixer leaned passed him to study her reflection.

She glanced at him from the mirror. “Makeup?”

“I was going to suggest we cover your freckles and some of your scars to throw off Marowski. He saw us the other night, on the way back from the Rail.”

“Right, right,” she said. “I vaguely remember something in a hallway. God, what a mess.” She kept her eyes straight ahead, tilting her chin and prodding at a deep scar there. Pre-war scar. She had a few of them.

“What kind of makeup do you think Diana Simone wears?” he asked.

“I have no earthly idea. Lots of it, I think.”

“Glamorous,” he said, trying to imagine what she’d look like.

Deacon hummed, remembering the red she wore the other night, as he studied her face. Still fair, but her skin was a bit darker in tone than his, with more olive undertones. He’d need some putty to fill in the gouge on her chin.

A bit of powder, slowly blending until her freckles faded. He filled in the scar on her chin with a bit of putty and blended that too, until she looked mostly like Fixer but just a little off. His thumb lingered on her chin as he tipped her head back and forth a bit to see if he’d missed anything.

She looked up at him for a moment, the brown of her eyes catching the late afternoon light, sparking with copper. Then she closed them. He kept his hand steady as he applied shadow, trying to emulate the look of those classic pre-war fashion pinups. Her eyelids fluttered under his first touch and she hardly breathed as he worked the gray and silver powders.

He discovered the smaller details of her face as he worked. The start of little crow’s feet framed her eyes, and a permanent frown line sat between her brows, one he wanted to run his thumb over to try and smooth away. She’d had enough to frown about. Too much.

“Hold still,” he said, as if she wasn’t already doing so. “Doing the eyeliner.” He managed to not glance down as she leaned forward a little more. That blouse—the deep line of cleavage it revealed—was mildly distracting, but he forced his eyes up and cupped the side of her face, held the corner of her eye out and drew a sharp line of black along the lid. Her eyelashes were dark, thick and short and—

He had _no_ right to find her... pretty. Before the other night, he might have been objective appreciation of how pretty she was. Her bone structure, her pout. Big dark eyes, sad and ever watchful. He could appreciate aesthetics, people’s physical qualities, like Drummer Boy’s smile or Glory’s nose. But there was never _attraction._ He hadn’t gone this foolish just from kissing someone since he was a teenager. Since Barbara—

And he hadn’t felt this unworthy in a long time, and that was saying something, since unworthy was business as usual for him.

He switched to the other eye, resting his hand on her temple. She leaned in a little, her face smooth and serene in a way he’d never really seen before. The little crease in her brow eased, the tension in her mouth relaxed.

And then the moment was gone.

He pulled away and her eyes fluttered open. She turned to look in the mirror again, a slow smile spreading across her face as she turned her head from side to side.

“I look so different…”

“Amazing what a bit of contouring can do. Really helped me out between face swaps.” He brandished some lipstick and she leaned forward again, lips parted in a pout.

He traced the brush across the wide, full line of her lower lip first, leaving a trail of wine-red in its wake.

Fixer had a really nice mouth. Like. _So_ nice. Wide. Full and downturned. That ever present, contemplative pout. The more he thought about—the more he _looked_ at her mouth the more he thought it was made for kissing. And being a smart ass grump. And smiling. At him.

Like, he’d be happy if she cast a smile his way. Once a week. Once a month, maybe. That’s it. That’s all he really needed.

He realized he was biting his lower lip as he painted her’s, and exaggerated a frown like he was concentrating instead of thinking about how he’d like to lean over and lay one on her.

Did she _remember_ ? The question kept rolling around in his head like a bunch of loose marbles. His head couldn’t make up its mind, but his gut told him she did. It hadn’t been a very good lie after all, but still. She’d been all adorable and embarrassed the other morning. Blanket over head and all. But why lie at all? Then again, if Deacon had been in her shoes, kissing _him_ would have made Deacon lie his own ass right off.

“Done?” she asked. He nodded and her pout turned into a smile and his heart skipped a beat, but she was already studying his handiwork in the mirror and hopefully didn’t notice how red his ears were getting. He stood and stretched with a groan, his spine popping a bit as he twisted, the beaded hem of his skirt swishing neatly around his knees.

“You’re wearing a dress?” She didn’t sound judgmental but still he went stiff.

Ignoring the strand of dread that threaded through him, he looked down at the dusty pink little number he’d dug up from deep in the annals of his storage and then grinned at her. “Yeah, why?” he asked. “Does that offend your old-world sensibilities?”

Fixer snorted. “Hardly. I’ve just seen you wearing a whole lot of disguises, and a dress has never been one of them.”

“I only go for a dress when I really need to throw ‘em off. Like tonight. Lex would _never_ wear a dress. Marowski won’t even notice me.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Fixer said, and for a second Deacon had a horrible feeling she’d seen some angle on his disguise that he’d missed, some way Marowski would see through him. And then she grinned at him.

He made a little “huh” sound, and she turned back to the mirror as if she didn’t notice but for the tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“So,” she said, turning her head from side to side and running her fingers through dark strands. “What do you think we should do with my hair?”

He studied her for a moment as she ran her fingers through it, brushing it back from the temples. It was too short to pull into a ponytail, a bit ragged looking.

“You should wear a wig,” he said.

She glanced at him in a mirror, one thin, arched brow raised. “A wig?”

Deacon grinned at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t underestimate the power of a good wig.” He rubbed the top of his head, smooth and slightly stingy from the fresh shave. “I should know. I’m wearing one right now.”

The wry chuckle and the eyeroll was all he needed.

“Okay, ginger,” she said.

He dropped his jaw in mock offense. “What gave me away?”

Her eyeroll turned into a smirk and she tapped he brow. “Eyebrows.”

~~~

Getting into the vault was easy. Deacon just showed up with the rest of the workers, a pocket full of reasons to be there, and a can-do attitude. Down the subway stairs and into the half-constructed hallway Deacon got stopped by the guy running the show, a frazzled ghoul who gave him a quick glance and went back to his checklist.

“Name?” he grunted.

“Danny,” Deacon said.

“Danny...Danny…” The ghoul looked up at him again and squinted at him, shaking his head.

“Ham sent me,” Deacon said, assuming what he thought might be this Danny’s stance, passive and ready to serve, hands clasped behind his back. “I work at the Rail?” He left the statement open ended, as if it were obvious, as if it would ring a bell. Which it wouldn’t. But it was all about the attitude.  

The ghoul squinted at him some more and Deacon clasped his hands in front of him, smiling serenely from behind his big, white-framed sunglasses—yes _those_ sunglasses. It would be fun to see how well Fixer could keep a straight face once she saw him.

“Ah, you must be the one he mentioned… I don’t see your name—”

The sound of shattering glass from somewhere behind the ghoul made him spin away from. “Damn it! Marsha, can you _please_ be careful with those! D’you think dinnerware scavenges itself? Grows on trees? No! We gotta go prospecting for it, and every glass broken is one more radroach we gotta kill…” The ghoul’s rant trailed off and Deacon looked around, bemused, stepped into the vault proper, and got to work.

One might think that a fancy gangster party might be an occasion that called for a bit of cleaning before hand, but the place was just as filthy as any other in the Commonwealth. The half finished vault was sparsely decorated with strings of lights and some doilies and candles on the tables.  Someone had thoughtfully propped a few fake christmas trees in the corners and the whole thing felt like some poor attempt at recreating the Third Rail.

He did a few circuits of the venue, mapping his pre-planned escape routes and noting shadowy corners, hiding spots should he actually need to go incognito. There were several exists where he’d stashed go-bags for Fixer, himself and Cait for after the mission. And then he installed himself at the bar and got to work.

The vault filled slowly with guests. Tommies in their old suits. Porkpie hat wearing gangsters in neckties. People in beautiful dresses, covered in sequins.

The band played swing and jazz, getting louder as the crowed got bigger. And Deacon actually worked, mixing drinks, taking caps, chatting up the more loquacious customers.

An hour into the night, he heard an overly familiar, totally exaggerated accent float over the chatter of the crowd, and resisted the urge to snap his head around and find Fixer and instead wiped a dirty spot on the bar with an equally dirty rag, spreading grime around.

“—and I heard there was much to invest in, up in the north. So I came to this ‘Commonwealth.’ It seems there’s quite—” The din of the crowed swallowed up the rest of her words. Deacon glanced up to spot a flash of bright red fabric and then lost her again.

Deacon worked his way to the end of the bar, taking and delivering orders as he went. He hardly garnered a glance, except for the occasional wink from a Tommy or one of their paid companions that hung off one or both arms. The working guys and gals were going to make bank this New Year’s eve.

He heard a laugh, haughty, mocking. Just recognizable as Fixer’s, but cruel. She’d never sounded like that before, despite all her grumpiness. A laugh that could make anyone’s hackles rise, but made Deacon’s go up because it was so unpleasant to his ears, knowing how unlike herself she sounded.

And then there was the pride again. They’d done so little undercover work together that he’d been worried about her infiltration skills. He knew Dez was going to ask her to play a deep cover game when she got into the Institute, and now he was testing her. _Again._ Just to see what she was capable of. And _again_ she surprised him. He really needed to stop underestimating her.

The crowd split as she and Marowski headed his way. She walked in those spiky heels like a pro, her hair all brushed back from her forehead into a messy ponytail. He’d helped with that too. God, his hands all over her all afternoon, applying makeup, running his fingers through her hair to get it to stay back, tousled just so. He felt like her personal fashion assistant, and she let him dress her up without a complaint, almost like she enjoyed it. And her look?

It was a _look._

The red blouse, the trousers. The makeup. The _flawless_ makeup. If Deacon did say so, himself.

Cait came into view shortly after, followed in Fixer’s wake, looking unremarkable and vaguely menacing in her road leathers. She posted up at the end of the bar and sparked a cigarette, casting a malevolent eye towards anyone who might encroach on her charge’s personal space.

Anyone but Marowski, that was. He was right up in Fixer’s personal space. Very personal. He rested his hand on the small of Fixer’s back, and Deacon was reminded how _small_ she was, paired with Marowski’s imposing height and bulk. Even in those spiked heels she barely came up to his chin. But Fix had faced down mirelurks and hardly broke a sweat. This oaf was already putty in her very capable hands. Even if he was the one who was getting handsy. The dude wasn’t a bad looking guy, though heavily touched by years of bad and worse habits. Older than Deacon by maybe a decade give or take however many years Deacon was missing from his life. Marowski wore his reputation like a mantel, and Fixer matched him in smoothness, her face serene and haughty beneath all that makeup.

Marowski offered her a mentat and she took one, popped it into her mouth. Or it looked like she did at least. Hart to tell. He couldn’t begrudge her some recreational substance use now and then, but he hoped she’d palmed it, because they were _working_ and—She sucked on the mentat, or what she pretended was the pill, her cheeks hollowing, throat bobbing as she swallowed and Marowski couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

For his own part, Deacon kept his eyes glued to the dirty rag and greasy smear of grime he pushed around on the bar, until the sharp rap of knuckles made him look up.

Fixer— _Diana,_ he corrected himself. No, not Diana even. His customer. He tried to look at her with new eyes and saw short, hard faced, arrogant-looking woman. She looked at him expectantly, without a spark of recognition or a hint of amusement at his glasses.

“What can I get for you, ma’am?” he asked, flipping the rag over his bare arm. He kept his eyes on his customer, determined not to glance at her companion till spoken to, through his bare shoulders and the V of his dress made him nervous, exposed. But he was sure Marowski wasn’t going to see a hint of Lex in such a stunningly charming bartender all decked out in a beaded, dusty pink dress with fetching white-framed sunglasses.

Fixer sighed and her eyes roamed the bar behind him for a moment. “What are you drinking, Mark? It’s on me this time.”

Already on first name basis, then. That deserved an impressed whistle, but instead Deacon turned his attention to the gentleman in question.

“Vodka,” Marowski grunted and popped another pill.

“I’ll have a rosé,” she said, her accent thick. Deacon turned to get their drinks but she cleared her throat, making him pause. “Nothing run through the nuka machine. Your nicest.” Ah. There it was. Nuka machine. Their agreed upon code phrase. She’d gotten the name of the Institute bastard selling synths, and now Marowski was gonna die.

“For this kinda party, we’ve only _got_ the best,” Deacon countered, placing a shot glass and a wine glass on the bar with a flourish. Next came the vodka, which he poured into the glass until it brimmed and spilled over a bit. At least the liquor would eradicate the filth on the bar.

Marowski slammed it back with a grunt and waved to order another one. Deacon got the glass of wine for Fixer and set it on the bar before her, then poured their mark another shot.

“So, Diana. Do you mix business and pleasure?” Marowski’s voice was somehow both sandpaper and oil. Oily sandpaper. Made Deacon’s skin creep.

“Depends on the business,” she said, taking a sip of the watered-down wine. Her lips left a stain of burgundy around the rim of the glass. “And the pleasure.”

 _That_ line deserved an eyeroll.

Marowski sparked up a cigarette and inhaled slow, so the cherry burned bright and long and then exhaled in a rush. The smoke wafted over Fixer but she didn’t flinch. Just waved a careless hand to disperse the smoke, a little smile curling at the corner of her mouth. If Marowski wasn’t already a dead man, Deacon was pretty sure he was now on her hitlist.

Fixer leaned forward on her stool. She put a finger under Marowski’s chin and tipped his face upwards to look her in the eyes. “You don’t blow smoke on someone like that unless you want to fight them, or fuck them,” she said and Marowski’s eyes went wide as her head tilted in inquiry. “So. What’ll it be?”

Deacon passed Cait to serve another customer, but he was all ears for Marowski’s reply.

“Shall we find out?” His oil-and-grit voice oozed his intent and he offered Fixer his arm, and it was definitely not fighting. She took it, swaying on those heels. Two gunners followed Marowski—his bodyguards. Cait peeled off from the bar and followed without a glance at anyone but her charge, and Deacon pretended not to watch the pair head towards the back of the vault, where the warren of suites had been converted into smaller party rooms catering to more specific vices, like getting high on Abraxo and/or not wearing pants.

Once they disappeared around the corner, Deacon loaded up a tray of little champagne glasses and wove his way through the room. People paid him no mind as they took the cups he offered until he reached the hallway.

He dumped the rest of the glasses into a bin but held onto the tray and followed the garbage-strewn passage, peering into the dirty windows, barely able to discern vague shapes or their machanications. Coarse laughter, the occasional curse. Someone moaned.

And then he saw two Gunners and Cait pretending not to eye each other outside a half open door, and heard Fixer’s voice again, floating through a partially closed door. “—these synths. They are… trainable, no?”

“Rest assured. The rumors that you can’t even tell the difference? That’s true.” The oil and sandpaper was back in his voice and Deacon’s skin crawled all over again. “This one girl I tried? Never knew she was an artificial woman till I was done with—”

Deacon didn’t even have a chance to let the outrage take full form, because Marowski finished his sentence with a roar of pain.

At the sound, Cait moved like a true brawler, spinning on the guards and swinging both fists. One of the guards went down, slamming into the wall behind him with a broken jaw.

Fixer hissed curse and then Deacon heard her choke. He darted past Cait and her handful of trouble, squeezing into the room. Marowski had one hand on the bar with a knife pinning it there, dark blood flowing around the blade. The other hand was unfortunately uninjured and wrapped around Fixer’s throat. Her eyes were wild, fingers scrambled to get a grip around his hand and her feet left the ground, one shoe flying off as she kicked.

Deacon snarled, raised his arms high. Swung the metal tray in a wide arch, directly into Marowski’s throat, aiming for his adam’s apple. The man gagged and dropped Fixer. She staggered, fell to her knees, coughing and gasping. He lunged for the bar, going for the knife in Marowski’s hand. It came free in a spray of blood, and Marowski howled, swinging backhanded so he slammed into Deacon’s gut hard enough that he doubled over.

When he looked up, Marowski was descending on Fixer, but she’d managed to get Deliverer free and fired two rounds into his chest, but he just kept coming. He should be dead. Deliverer could stop a charging radstag and still he came on, advancing as Fixer stumbled backwards on uneven feet. Panic and bile rose in Deacon’s throat as his vision shifted red, and he threw the tray bodily at Marowski’s back, but it had no more effect than if  He’d thrown a teddy bear at a deathclaw.

And then Marowski was on Fixer, ham-sized fists at her throat again. Deacon heard Cait swearing somewhere behind him, and then the thud of a body being thrown against the wall. Deacon gripped the knife he’d pulled from Marowski’s hand in his buzzing fingers and all he could think about was the best way to rip out the bastard’s throat—

Fixer lunged forward, half obscured by Marowski’s bulk and then he took a gurgling breath and fell forward. On top of her. Gagging, twitching. Dark blood pooled on the floor, and one small, pale hand pushed back against all that bulk.

So much blood. _Whose_ blood?

Deacon rushed forward and fell to his knees, shoved hard against the dying man’s shoulder. Fixer squirmed, and with a few heaves they managed to flip him on his back. Marowski gurgled again, twitched a bit, still not dead, but definitely dying. A knife protruded from his chest, buried hilt deep, blood welling up around the blade.

Deacon reached for Fixer, pulled her away from the body and looked her over. Impossible to tell if she was hurt. Covered blood. Red smeared across her chest, soaking her shirt, dripped from her chin. The sight made him nauseous.  

“Jesus fuck,” Cait said from the door. “That’s a lot of blood.” She straightened up from dragging on of the gunners’ bodies into the room, staring.

“Please tell me none of that—” Deacon choked, took a shuddering breath— “that is yours?”

“No,” she said. She coughed a little, swiped at the blood on her face. “He was on buffouts,” she managed to croak. “Maybe psycho.”

“He didn’t go down from gunshots, a stab wound got him?”

Fixer’s voice was hoarse. “Severe abdominal aorta. Near—” she cleared her throat, winching. “Near instant bleed-out. Sorry. Hurts to talk.”

He stared at her a moment. “You scare me,” he said. “A little. Lot.”

She sniffed at him, swiped at her forehead with the back of her palm leaving a streak of blood.

“And another question.” He helped her to her feet, where she stood on her bare foot, hip cocked to accommodate the uneven heel. “How many knives did you bring? More importantly, where did you keep them?”

“Uh—” she started with a shaky laugh, but Cait cut over her, done dragging the other body inside.

“We’ve got to move.” She stood at the door, looking back and forth between them and the hall. “No one’s investigated but that guy kinda...ya know. Screamed.”

Deacon nodded and fetched Fixer’s other shoe as she looted Marowski’s body. Keys, chems, caps. Deacon steadied her as she put on the other shoe, and he felt her limbs shaking.

That was not at all how he’d intended the evening to go. Way too much blood. Way too much giant scary man on drugs, choking out his partner and very much not dying quickly. His hand slipped down her arm, fingers trailing through blood until he found her hand. He squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back and then let go. Deacon lead the way out the room, stepping over the gunner bodies, down the hall, away from the party and deeper into the vault.

“This way,” he murmured. “There’s a secret exit…” They reached the stairs after a few turns, and he groped beneath for the bag he’d put there. “Changes of clothes. Should have plenty of time before anyone finds the bodies.”

The three of them stripped, switching into less “ _I just murdered someone at a New Year’s gangster party_ ” attire. Deacon tugged on a pair of jeans under his dress. Then off came the ruined garment and on went a on a t-shirt, a jacket, his wig. Cait strapped herself back into her leather corset-thing and her jeans.

Fixer’s hands shook as she undid the buttons down her blood-stained blouse. He shuddered at all the blood covering her neck, her chest— _not hers_ , he reminded himself. _Abdominal aorta._ Bleedout. With psycho in his system, Marowski’s blood pressure would have been through the roof. No wonder he died so quickly after.

Deacon averted his eyes as Fixer undressed and wiped herself down with the soiled blouse. It would have been easy to stare at her from behind his glasses without her noticing, watch the shift of her hips as she bent and took off the heels, tugged on her boots. Okay, so maybe he watched a little, just from the corner of his eye. It was nothing he hadn't seen before, really. Two months in the field left little to the imagination. Besides all the things he’d started imagining recently. Really, his imagination was relentless.  

When he looked back at her, she wore her duster over street clothes, and a glazed expression. Must be the adrenaline wearing off. Now that she was mostly free of blood, Deacon saw the beginnings of dark bruising around her neck, thumbprints around her windpipe, the lesions disappearing under the collar of her coat. He went hot and cold, a little ball of seething, righteous anger bubbling in his chest. If Marowski wasn’t already dead, Deacon would have delighted in ripping out several more of his aorta. Maybe some ventricles too. There was more than one way to rip out a heart.

Ignoring all the chaos in his chest, Deacon shoved everything salvageable into a bag (plus his dress which was now nothing more than a bloody keepsake) and they climbed up the stairs and out into Boston Common. Fake vaults meant more than one exit, most of them hidden, something Deacon appreciated.

They headed north-east, walked to Goodneighbor in near-silence, only broken when one of them called out potential dangers when they saw them. Deacon checked his urge to fill the silence with inane chatter. Didn’t want to make Fixer respond to his bullshit and strain her voice more than she had to.

“Get MacCready and meet up at the Red Rocket outside of Sanctuary tomorrow night,” Fixer said to Cait when they got to Goodneighbor’s neon-lit gates. Her voice was more quiet than usual, with the hint of a rasp. “And let Hancock know Marowski is dead.”

“You got it,” Cait said. “Save some mayhem for me?”

“Always,” Deacon replied. “We’ll make a super-agent of you yet, Cait.”

Fixer waved as Cait vanished behind the gate and then it was just the two of them again, and they headed off north, towards HQ.

Fixer kept stealing glances at him as they neared HQ, and the third time he caught her doing it he didn’t look away.

“What?” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Those glasses,” she said pointedly.

 _Oh_. Deacon forgot he was wearing the big white round plastic ones. He probably looked like an idiot. “Yeah, I got a hot fashion tip from this woman I know. Thought I’d try out the look. The dress they go with is ruined, though.” He didn’t have to try to hard to infuse his words with remorse.

Fixer shook her head as they descended into the back tunnel towards HQ. “You looked great, though,” she said. She glanced at him and looked away again, studiously avoiding the deeper puddles as they sloshed down the hall.

He grinned, feeling something of a flush creep over the back of his neck. “You were the show-stopper,” he said. He pulled the big round glasses off his face and passed them to her. “Here.”

She took them and slipped them on for a moment, looked up expectantly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. That’s the Death Bunnies look, right there,” he said seriously. “Very you.”

“And what about you?” She let the glasses slip down the bridge of her nose, raising an eyebrow at him.

Deacon winked and pulled a regular-shaped pair of glasses out of one of his pockets, slid them on.

Fixer shook her head at him. “Lets trade secrets,” she said. “I’ll tell you how many knives I carry if you tell me how many pairs of sunglasses you have on you.”

Deacon shook his head sadly. “Sorry Fix, even _I_ don’t even know how many sunglasses I carry at once. I think it’s this quantum thing, but I haven’t figured out the math just yet.”

She laughed, a hushed, shallow little sound, and pulled off her new glasses, stashing them away in a pocket, perhaps to join her collection of knives.

HQ was all but deserted. Dez wasn’t there. Tom wasn’t either. Nor was Glory. It was a relief and a curse, really, because less people meant less eyes, but less people also meant less distractions. From Fixer. Her makeup was all smudgy now, lipstick all but worn away, eyeshadow faded into the bags under her eyes, her freckles coming through her foundation. Blood drying on her cheeks.

“I’m going to check in with Carrington and take a bath,” she informed him. “Normally blood doesn’t bother me, but…” her voice trailed off and she shuddered.

Deacon settled himself into a bed in the hall and pulled off his boots, his wig. He found some blankets and made comfortable as he eavesdropped as Fixer delivered the Marowski report. They’d need to do further recon to make sure the trade was cut off, but Carrington seemed pleased. He was brisque as usual, took everything in stride, and told her he’d assign it to someone else. Deacon, probably. Which meant it would end up back with Fixer anyway.

“We’re almost ready,” Deacon heard Carrington say. “Everyone else who needs to be there is stationed at the relay site.”

He heard Fixer mutter an affirmative and then a shuffle of footsteps.

“Fixer?” Carrington said, and the footsteps stopped. “You’re very brave.”

Deacon’s eyes went wide behind his glasses. Was that a _compliment_? Coming from Carrington? Miracles never ceased around Fixer, it seemed.

“I’m just trying to find my son,” she muttered. “And... figure out why the Institute does what it does.”

“Whatever you’re reasons, you’ve helped more than any agent has to date. At least in such a short time. We’re in your debt.” The pause between them felt awkward. “Here, I have some supplies. Come get them when you’ve cleaned up.”

Fixer muttered a thanks and then all fell quiet. Deacon fidgeted. Got up and went to his stash of books, pulled out a few. Everything was too dense, or too illegible. War and Peace. Too much family drama. MacBeth. Too much blood. Pride and Prejudice. Too many...feelings. The Jungle Book. That sounded about his speed at the moment. Silly morality tales and talking animals. Why not.

It was nearly a half hour later when Fixer rounded the corner with an armful of medical supplies, juggling stimpacks and bandages. She stopped short when he looked up from his book. Her hair was wet, her skin pink and damp, free of grime, blood, and makeup and she wore a baggy t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

Her mouth opened like she wanted to say something. She didn’t say anything though, smiled instead.  Smiled at him. Like goddamn sunshine, that smile. And there his stupid brain went, looking for poetry when there wasn’t any.

Still, his heart missed a few stairs on the way down to his stomach and he reminded himself for the hundredth time to get a grip on the bannister before he fell and broke his neck. Think about how she was going to the Institute and he should strike out on his own again soon, even if she made it back fine, and it was for the best, and hell, she might even _like_ the Institute.

There was nothing that would keep her from double crossing them if what she found underground was juicer than anything the Railroad could offer.

But she was _Jeanne_ . It was hard to fathom someone with Jeanne’s history selling out the good guys. Of course that assumed the Railroad _was_ the good guys. Lately Deacon wasn’t so sure.

“Can we talk?” she asked. Her voice still grated from the bruising around her throat, but less than before.

“Sure thing, boss,” he replied, webbing his fingers behind his head and leaning back against the rough brick, book set aside. She hesitated a moment and then dropped her supplies on to an empty mattress and sat down across from him, the sunlight gone from her as fast as it had appeared. Mostly cloudy with a chance of Fixer.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Dez is going to ask me to infiltrate the Institute.” She looked down at her hands, clasping and unclasping in her lap. “No one’s told me yet, but they are.”

“Yeah,” he said. “No one’s told me yet, either, but that would a safe assumption. Not that there are such things as safe assumptions. What’s the concern?” Like he couldn’t think of a single one.

She turned to her supplies and started sorting through them, making piles of bandages and rows of stims and blood packs. “Let’s see,” she said. “Make nice to the people that killed my husband and kidnapped my son, stole ten years of his life away from me?” She coughed a little, swallowed with a wince, but her brows knit together in a frown as if trying to sort through a puzzle.

“Yeah,” Deacon said with a sigh. “I can see how that’s gotta be a little problematic.”

She looked up from winding up a bandage into a neat roll. “It is. I’m—” she struggled for a moment. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

Deacon laughed. _Couldn’t do it?_ She could do _anything_. “Fixer,” he said, dropping his arms, leaning forward. “Tonight you took down one of the most notorious drug lords in Commonwealth history. Your under cover is flawless. Not to mention you’re planning to slingshot your molecules into the secret lab of a bunch of mad scientists. After that, pretty much anything’s gonna be a piece of pie. And we can practice.”

That got her to smile again, just the barest flicker of light behind all the overcast. “Well,” she said, “when you put it that way…”

“That’s the spirit,” Deacon said. Something in his chest eased a bit, made him not so nervous about all those nonsense feelings. She didn’t need him mooning over her when she actually  needed a friend to give her the occasional pep-talk or crack a few jokes. That, he could do. “Want to do some reading?” He picked up the book and waved it at her a bit.

“Sure. What were you reading?”

“ _The Jungle Book._ ‘Kaa’s Hunting’.”

“I’ve never read it,” she said.

“I’m just getting to a good part,” he said. “Mowgli’s about to run away into the jungle.” He paused for a moment, watching her watch him like she expected something but wasn’t about to ask. He almost decided not to, and then he glanced down at the bruises on her throat and his own throat tightened in a creep of residual fear.

He scooted over to the outside of the mattress. “Want the inside again?”

His heart glared at him from down in his stomach, asking him what the fuck he was doing, but she smiled and he thought he detected a hint of gratitude, and that shut his heart right up. She crawled over his knees, bringing her duster along, and eased herself down with her back to the wall, pillowing her head on her coat.

“Well?” she said, looking up at him. One eyebrow quirked expectantly, her foot tapping on the mattress.

He leaned against the wall and let the book fall open in his lap, hardly daring to look down at her, and started to read. It was stupid. It was really stupid to be reading out loud in as low a voice as he could manage, with her head a breath away from leaning against his hip. The words helped him ignore how close her head was to being in his lap, so he focused on the words.

She stared up at the ceiling as the story unfolded. Mowgli getting captured by the monkees. Deacon always liked the name for them; Bandar-log. Her eyes sank closed from time to time and he thought maybe he was falling asleep, until she stirred.

“Do the voices?” she asked.

He glanced down at her, peering at her as if he’d just noticed her presence and she stared up at him with those dark, watchful eyes. Imploring, sparking with mischief, or hope, or _something._

“The voices?” he said.

She nodded, her foot starting to bounce again. “The voices.”

He sighed like she was asking the word of him.  “If I knew you were going to be this demanding, I’d have chosen _War and Peace_ . That would _actually_ put you to sleep.”

She nestled deeper into the blankets with a roll of her eyes and now her cheek was at his hip. Deacon hid his shaky breath with a sigh and slid down to lay on his back so her face wasn’t so damn close to parts of him that wanted her closer. But he miscalculated because now her nose was at his shoulder and they were close enough that he could turn his head and kiss her. Instead he stared down at the book.

She shivered, making a little sound of tired discomfort. He didn't risk turning his head, just glanced sideways at her, frowning.

“Cold?” he asked, his voice light despite the blaring alarms going off in his head and the feeling of his heart pounding away in his stomach.

“We _are_ in a crypt,” she said, shifting closer.

Deacon shifted as well, raising his arm, offering her a spot against his side. She took it, wincing when she moved her neck as she settled, curled under his arm with her cheek on his chest. Just business as usual. His friend needed his support, a bit of comfort. That _human_ connection. Touch starved. They both were. And it was okay that she felt good and right tucked under his chin, because she was Fixer, and she needed him. To do the voices.

So he did the voices.

A deep rumble for Baloo. A purr for Bagherah. A higher, innocent voice for Mowgli. She fell asleep before they got to the snake, and he put the book aside, took his glasses off, and let his eyes sink closed.

He woke later, surprised that he'd fallen asleep at all. Her hair tickled his nose and he wrinkled it, found his face buried in the back of her neck. He didn’t dare move for a good long while. She smelled like soap. Like clean earth and flowers, sweet sweat, and the deep rich notes of her leather duster she used as a pillow. He tried not to pay attention to how easily they nestled together like spoons, her back pressed back against him, breathing deep and steady.

And her ass... it pressed compromisingly close to areas her ass should stay far, far away from, if the low ache that started in him was any indication. Deacon was grateful that he didn’t have to worry about a hard-on she would be able to feel pressing into her. He’d stay stealth-turned on and he’d keep his hands perfectly and respectably to himself, one arm pillowing his head, the other slung over the soft dip of her waist, so his hand lay on the mattress. As much as he’d love to put them on her hips, or tuck his arm up over her chest. Slide his fingers through hers. Pull her closer. Or something.

He should really get up and move beds. Or just… be awake. Go bother PAM. Read some reports. Finish the _Jungle Book_. But he didn’t.

Fixer turned over, still half asleep. Murmured something half intelligible in French, and buried her face in his chest. And then he did exactly what he should not be doing, and slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her closer, and she hummed and nuzzled closer, her nose rubbing against the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

The feeling of her cheek against his chest, sound of contentment she made squeezed his heart, jump started it and sent it thudding merrily along at a million miles an hour, so loud he was sure it would wake her.

But she sounded happy. Which was good. Happy Fixer. The thought made him a little speechless, but it didn’t matter because she drifted back to sleep, so he didn’t have to say anything. He lay there for a while, perfectly still, like he was an inanimate accessory to her safe and dreamless sleep.

And then, slowly, his heart stopped its incessant pounding, and he followed her back into a doze, his cheek resting on the top of her head and the smell of soap and leather all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lkjfdsa haaaaa. Tabarnak! Guys, plz. Just kiss. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the fluffy angsty nonsense as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	21. Eschaton

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple."

― Richard Adams, Watership Down

 

Fixer

The relay was too big to be real, a hulking mass of concrete and struts and wires plugged into generators and consoles and power meters and god only knew what other regulators and modulators. Fixer didn’t know the names of half of the things she stared at when she pushed through the gate, only knew that the project took up the entire northwest corner of Sanctuary and that the fence around it was covered in High Voltage and Keep Out signs, and it was painfully obvious that whatever was behind the fence was _not_ , in fact, a generator.

But it was, she knew when she stared at the mess of tech and struts, concrete, and metal, her future.

An open sided wooden outhouse—perhaps a control room—ran along the back of the fenced off area. Fixer edged around the relay platform, goosebumps raising over her skin as she passed under the shadow of one of the metal relay struts.

The machine, the mission, the Institute itself took up unmeasurable real estate in her brain since the project began, but she’d never actually imagined what the teleporter would look like—simply that it was some distant-future mad-science mancine that would take her to her son. Now that she knew it was a device directly from _Frankenstein_ she wondered if Tom was going to strap her to a table, flip a switch, and shout “it’s alive!” as 100,000 volts of electricity jolted through her system, reduced her to her molecules, and shot her into...somewhere. Space. The void. Hopefully the Institute. Which she had also not spent much time imagining—

“Hey!” Tom shouted when he saw her, looked up from a console he’d been hunched over. “It’s Fixer! Was wondering when we were gonna see you. ” He looked up at the relay with a light in his eyes that Fixer thought was reserved for looking at cute baby animals.

“Hello, Tom,” she said, brushing past the curtain that served as a door. She glanced to the right and saw Dez at a map table, pouring over a fistful of reports. “Hello Dez.”

At the sound of her name the woman looked up from the reports and raised an eyebrow. “There you are,” she said, tossing the papers onto the table.

“Here I am,” Fixer said, giving the relay another glance. “And here _it_ is.”

“Isn’t it a beauty?” Tom practically bounced on the balls of his feet, eyes darting between Fixer and the relay.

“It’s—” she took a breath— “something. Is it ready?”

Tom deflated. “Not yet. Man… This thing is fussy, running some tests. We don’t wanna not melt you down properly.”

Fixer’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you have an ETA?”

“Uh. A week? Yeah. Sturges and I are still workin’ on the relay dish. We gotta make sure we beam you right into the heart of those Institute bastards.”

Fixer nodded, feeling dazed. It was fine. It was going to be fine. She turned to Dez.

“We need to talk,” she said, “about the way the Railroad handles synths.”

~~~

The gate shut behind her and Jeanne fell back against it, taking a deep breath.

Her conversation had gone better than expected. Jeanne held her temper in check, and Dez actually listened, and now she thought that _maybe_ , maybe the Railroad would start looking at the bigger picture.

Dez explained that they simply couldn’t add new memories to a current synth’s program without causing major damage, degedating memories, unstable personalities. And a whip on a synth mind and uploading another was something that could be done twice, maybe three times before the glitches would start to happen. Amari and Deacon had said much the same thing, back in Goodneighbor, though Dez had taken the time to really lay it out for her.

Still, there had to be another way. Dez was convinced that the only way would be to take down the Institute in its current iteration. Jeanne was convinced that they needed to fight bigotry in the Commonwealth. Glory wanted to free her people. And Deacon... She had no idea what he wanted.

It was going to be a long, exhausting road.

But it was going to be fine. Dez listened to her, agreed with her feelings about how the Railroad handled synths. There was room for change. Glory was working with Preston to fold some Minutemen operations into Railroad operations. Everyone was uneasy but it was exactly what needed to happen if the Railroad was to survive even another few months.

What had Deacon said when they’d first met? Officially met. _Last legs_.

Like her thoughts had summoned him, she spotted Deacon strolling up the street, hands in his pockets. No wig today, and she noted with a faint happy note. The wig made him someone else, someone younger and not quite _Deacon_ , even if he did look...like some stupid greaser. Suave. Cool. Like he wasn’t actually a complete dork.

He smiled at her and she waved, pushing off the wall to meet him halfway down the street.

“Hell of a last stand,” he said, nodding towards the top of the relay, jutting over the fence.

She looked over her shoulder and shivered a little. “Yeah,” she said. “ _Crisse_ , that’s it. Right there. Future of the Railroad I guess.”

She started walking back the way Deacon had come and he followed, fell into step beside her and slung his arm around her shoulders.

A contented little part of her purred with warmth, like it had the night before back in HQ, and she gave in to the urge to lean her head against his shoulder. She heard him huff a little sigh, or maybe it was a laugh, and he gave her shoulder a squeeze. The warmth grew, and she let it. Because why not. If he was providing, she wouldn’t say no.

The kiss though… the memory stirred another sort of warmth in her belly. Last night she’d been too tired and shaken from the literal bloodbath she’d experienced down the the fake vault, a hard enough place to be, and the trepidation about having to go back to Sanctuary and what she was about to do to feel much else besides the comfort of his voice as he read to her, or the continent of being able to press against someone warm and safe. She hadn’t had a single nightmare.

“You looked like you were on your way somewhere.” she said, “headed not in this direction?”

“Yeah, have to check in with the old ball and chain. Dez is such a radhound sometimes.”

“I’m going to the Rocket,” Fixer said, lifting her head from his shoulder. “I’ll wait for Cait and Mac there tonight.” She didn’t invite him, but the warm little part of her purring away wanted his company. Not that she’d mind some alone time, either. She was pretty sure there was an old bed in the back room of the Rocket. Toss a blanket over it, lay back. Stick her hands down her pants and think about… whatever. Again.

She must really be stressed. Nate would be laughing at her.

Deacon dropped his arm but kept pace. “Sure thing, boss. I can stop by later if you wanna have a campfire and tell scary stories before you take off. I’ll make smores.”

She snorted. “Okay,” she said. “Though I always preferred just toasting marshmallows.”

They reached the bridge and parted ways with a wave and shared smile, and the warmth followed her down the hill towards the old gas station.

The place was in shambled, untouched since she found Dogmeat loitering there just a little over two months ago. Had it really been that long? When she’d first started out on Shaun’s trail she thought she’d find him in a matter of days, but now it seemed every step she took got her more and more embroiled in this new world’s drama.

Jeanne boosted herself up on the outer window sill under the Red Rocket’s overhang and started looking at strewn trash and rubble, the rusted-out husk of the filling station like a hollow shell. She’d been so scared the night she’d headed out into the darkness, not knowing if she’d find worse than giant bugs. And she’d found a dog.

Dogmeat… She missed him, wished she could take him on her missions, but then she would be that woman with a dog. He was safer in Diamond City, with Piper and her little sister. Nick and Ellie looked after him too. The only reason Jeanne had for keeping him around were selfish ones.

Maybe she could stop going undercover so much when she got back. She could travel with Dogmeat. And her son.

Her ten year old son.

Not a baby like her body kept telling her he would be. She’d never be able to hold him, hear his first word, watch him take his first steps, teach him to read, teach him to speak French _._

It didn’t matter. He was her son. He was the point of it all. Him, and honoring Nate. As for the day-to-day, she’d been making it all up as she went, but hadn’t thought any further than the relay.

What came after the relay was a big, empty sinkhole. She wasn’t going back. Not to before. There’d been a part of her that though if she could just get to Shaun then maybe reality would snap back into something a bit more sensible. But no. This was her life now, forever, unless she could get a cryopod working and sleep another two centuries. And she was ready to start building a life instead of living in this in-between place, without Shaun, or any sense of where she fit.

Maybe she could start feeling a bit of that sinkhole. Maybe she wouldn’t have to work so hard when she got back. Wouldn’t have to fight anymore. Rest. With the Railroad and the Minutemen collaborating now, maybe she could actually try and find someplace to build...something. A home.

But that meant Deacon’s work would take him elsewhere. The sour thought stung more than she thought it would, made her inhale sharply at the sudden realization that she’d come to rely on him, and there’d be one more hollow ache left behind when they did part ways.

But It wasn’t anything she hadn’t faced before. Friends, lovers, family paraded before her eyes, all lost or abandoned in the name of the cause, or survival. They were the same thing, really

That’s how things worked, even on the other side of the end of the world. The fight was the thing, and people got close, and then pulled apart. Like X, like her CAAB friends. Their friendship closest thing she’d had to something build on mutual understanding of all the trauma... Forged in fire and then ripped apart.  

It wasn’t like Deacon wouldn’t be _around._ Around the way Glory was around, or Nick. But she's gotten so used to having him there, right behind her. In her bed. The way he smelled was a comfort. His jokes and the way he made her roll her eyes and chuckle. She took him completely for granted.

With a frustrated grow, Jeanne shook herself and jumped from her perch, went to start a fire and make some sort of food. She lost herself in the motion of chopping up vegetables and meat. No time to think when she could concentrate on how to dress the yao goi roast and how long it would take to cook to get all the radiation out, and what would make a good side. Gourd. Tatos and carrots. She missed _herbes salees_ from back home. Real spices. She doubted that a meat pie would even taste the same without allspice or cloves.

While the roast cooked, Jeanne started in on cleaning up the old station. It would take a lot of work to actually get it presentable, but she started with the room with the old bed, cleaning out the garbage and junk, flipping the mattress. It didn’t smell too bad. Fairly salvageable actually, practically clean compared to some of the places she’d slept in the past two months.

Her body protested as she got to work, reminding her that she had vivid bruising around her neck, that she’d been choked out by a 200 pound man who hand then fallen on top of her and died, washing her in his blood. That she’d spent at least twelve hours in heels. Something she hadn’t done since being too pregnant to walk in them.

Still, she threw herself into the cleaning. Working towards having somewhere nice to stay when she had to come this far north far outweighed any ache in her body. And maybe the Rocket be a good place to bring Shaun when she got him. At least at first. Until she figured it all out.

The garbage went into the dumpster, the junk it a pile to take back to Sanctuary. The garage would make a nice workshop, and she started making plans for getting a weapons bench and a set of power armor down here. Maybe Deacon would want a sewing machine...

And if she got the place clean enough, maybe she wouldn’t have to sleep in Sanctuary ever again.

Jeanne hardly noticed the sun slipping toward the horizon, west over Cambridge. It must be around 6pm by the time she noticed it getting dark. A glance at pip-boy confirmed the time. The sky had gone pink-orange, clouds dotting the horizon, and the air was clear and bright.

She heard a hail from up the road and saw three figures heading down the road from Sanctuary. They grew closer and Jeanne raised an eyebrow when she saw not only Deacon, but Glory and Preston as well.

“Was there a party I didn’t know about?” she asked, hands finding her hips as they approached.

Glory and Deacon both grinned at her, and Preston offered a sheepish smile.

“Smells _great_ Fix,” Deacon said, looking around. “You’ve been doing some yard-work, too. I think you knew about the party before we did.”

Glory held up a bottle of wine in each hand. “Couldn’t find any rum or nuka,” she said, “but Deacon said… what… ‘French people love wine.’ Whatever that means.”

Jeanne shook her head in wonderment, wavering between embarrassment at all the sudden social attention and a little urge to actually sit down and share a bottle.

“ _That’s_ a sweeping generalization,” she said, “but seeing as I might be the only French person left, perhaps a fair one. I do like wine.”

Preston scratched his nose, looking faintly embarrassed. “Uh. Deacon mentioned cards?”

Deacon rubbed his hands together. “What’s your game, Garvey. Caravan? Poker?”

Jeanne raised her eyebrows. “People still play poker?”

Preston nodded. “I’ve got a caravan deck,” he said. “No straight deck though.”

“We’ll try both,” Deacon said. “Poker is a grand tradition that can survive anything. It’s like the cockroach of card games. Or maybe that’s blackjack.” He waved his words away. “Whatever. Point stands.”

“I guess it would be rude to eat the whole roast myself,” she conceded, feeling beset on all sides.

“That’s the spirit,” Deacon said, wandering over to fuss with the fire.

“What’s caravan?” she asked.

Deacon looked up from putting a pot of water on the fire. “Only the greatest game in the wasteland,” he said. “We’ll teach you.”

The four of them set up a makeshift table in the garage. Preston swept the floor clean and Jeanne found a crate to use as a table. She made a pillow out of her duster, thick enough to keep the cold floor from seeping into her bones. Jeanne wasn’t sure what she would do without that jacket. A comfort object as much as a practical one. Saved her life every day, made a pillow every night, always smelling of leather and safety. She glanced at Deacon as he passed out bowls of roast and tato and gave him a little smile. She’d never really thanked him for not just giving her the coat, but making sure it fit.

Glory sank down next to Jeanne and thunked the bottles on the table. She opened opened one and gave it a tentative sniff, face contorting into a grimace.

“Goddamnit... Smells vinegary.” She took a swig and sputtered, blinked tears, sputtering. “A lot vinegary.”

The smell of sour wine wafted over Jeanne and she made her own face. “Try the other?”

Glory opened the next bottle, and actually gagged. “This one’s worse,” she said. “I’m gonna…”

Deacon rocked back on his heels, laughing. “No wine for the French girl,” he said. “Lots of vinegar, though.”

Glory swept the bottles away and when she returned the four of them settled, sadly wineless but with lots of food. Deacon started digging through his bag, looking for cards. Jeanne saw a flash of pale pink as he shifted through his things, and her mind flashed back to the night before, how nice he’d looked in the dress and how genuinely sorrowful he’d sounded when he said it was ruined.

Deacon raised his hands with an ah-ha of triumph, waving around a few decks of cards. “Caravan,” he started, “is one of those games that’s impossibly complicated to explain, and very easy to play.” He sorted through one of the bigger decks, splitting them in half and when he handed Jeanne a stack of cards, she found all the backs to be a jumble of different decks. Glory and Preston pulled out their own decks, much in the same state as Deacon’s.

Jeanne frowned. “Does everyone just carry around random, mismatched cards?”

“Part of Caravan is building your deck,” Deacon said. “Different cards do differting things, so you can play to your strategies. Caravan is a great way to pass the time. Build raport with the locals.”

Jeanne smirked at him. “Listen in on conversations not meant for your ears?”

Deacon smirked right back and flipped through his cards.

“Here,” Glory said, with a jerk of her head. “Watch me play the first round, and we’ll explain.”

Jeanne slid over to sit next to her, dragging her coat and settling knee to knee on one side of the crate.

“I’ll play you,” Preston said.

“I hope you like crying, Garvey,” she said, and the game began. It apparently worked by balancing four “caravans” of cards, trying not to go over a certain amount while keeping one’s opponent from doing the same. Caps on the table, cards following. Some of the face cards acted as wildcards, changing card values or order of play, and the game ended quickly when Glory played a Queen of Hearts and Preston didn’t have a single card that wouldn’t put his caravans over 27 points.

Preston groaned and slid the ten caps across the crate. Glory pocketed them, looking smug. “You and Fix are up, Dee,” she said, elbowing Jeanne.

Deacon grinned and slapped some caps down on the table. Jeanne fished around in her pocket and matched him, then added another five.

“Feeling bold, for a rookie,” he said.

“I’m going to try out this thing called beginners luck.”

Beside her, Glory laughed, more of a snort through her nose than anything.

Jeanne thought she had a vague grasp of the game until she started playing. Glory hissed at every move she made, suggested a different card until Jeanne shook her head, laughing.

“Just let me lose,” she told Glory.

“Lose to Deacon? That’s _embarrassing_ .” But she shook her head and held up her hands when Jeanne huffed at her, fending off a glare. “Fine, fine. Shutting up.”

Deacon smirked and conferred with Preston from behind a fan of cards. The two of them glanded at Jeanne and then Deacon frowned down at the array of cards on the table, scratching his chin and frowning more deeply. Preston settled back, unable to keep a little smile from his face. Jeanne really wanted to clean him out in a few hands of poker, or even better... _La Fouine._

“You know, I’m actually in a tough spot, here.” Deacon tapped his finger on one of his cards, played a 9 instead.

Glory bit back a gasp, and Jeanne could feel her vibrating with excitement beside her. “One move…” Glory whispered.

Jeanne studied the cards, running through her options. Deacon watched her from across the crate, his mouth set, waiting for her to make her move. She did, playing a king.

Preston clapped and Deacon groaned, falling back in defeat.

“You let me win,” Jeanne said, meeting his grin with narrowed eyes and crossed arms.

“Ha! Me? Let _you_ win?” Deacon shook his head. “Never.”

Jeanne slid the caps towards herself, counting them out. Twenty, ten of them her own.

“But _if_ it were a fake win, the honorable thing to do would be to forfeit the bet,” he said.

Jeanne laughed as she dropped the caps into the pouch she kept in her coat. “No chance, Dee. If you’re willing to lose on purpose, you’re willing to give up the caps you put on the line.”

Glory turned to her, their knees brushing. “What did you think of the game?” she asked. Jeanne had never seen her so at ease before, smiling and laughing, and not yelling at anyone. Preston smiled quietly to himself and watching everything. He had his coat unbuttoned, his scarf loose around his neck and he looked different with his hat off, his hair dark and thick, cropped short to his head.

“It was pretty good,” Jeanne said. “I think I need more practice. Maybe against someone who won’t let me win.” Then she smiled. “Want to learn an old-world game?”

Deacon sat up at that and started clearing off the crate. “Yeah. What’ve you got?”

“A game from Acadia and Eastern Quebec. Far north of here, where I’m from. We call it _La Fouine_. ‘The Weasel.’”

Deacon handed Jeanne a deck of cards. “Play on,” he said.

“What’s a weasel?” Preston asked as she dealt the cards in sets.

Jeanne faltered, trying to think about how she could explain the animal, why the game was named after it. “Uh. A small sort of...rodent thing. It’s long and has short legs. Very crafty. The game is called La Fouine because we play with four cards set aside that can add a little chaos. That’s la fouine. Put a weasel in the deck.”

“So a weasel is like what? A molerat?” Preston frowned.

“Ah...well,” Jeanne said as she shuffled the deck, the cards flaring neatly in her hands. “Weasels  have hair. And...aren’t disgusting—”

Deacon gasped. “Molerats are _not_ disgusting. You take that back.”

Glory groaned. “Here we go,” she said, nudging Jeanne.

Jeanne cleared her throat. “Anyway... We can play _La Fouine_ in teams,” she said. “Glory, you and I will be east and west. Preston, Deacon, you’re north and south.”

“Okay,” Preston said, beaming his full attention at her.

“It’s a point based game. We’ll keep bets low. One cap each round. What shall the trump suit be?”

“Diamonds,” Deacon said promptly. “My lucky suit.”

“Lucky or not, don’t expect me to let you win,” she quipped.

He scoffed, and Jeanne dealt the cards.

After two hours, four games of _La Fouine_ and two more of Caravan later, Preston stood up with a groan and tugged his hat back on his head.

“I’d like to stay,” he said through a yawn, “but Glory and I are heading down to Graygarden tomorrow to try and make a deal with some robot farmers. Early morning start”

Jeanne stood too, and hauled Glory to her feet. When she stood she was only a few inches taller than Jeanne, maybe one-hundred and sixty-five centimeters. That surprised her. Glory carried herself so tall, was so powerful in Jeanne's mind that she expected her to tower above. Glory clapped her on the shoulder and made her excuses as well.

Jeanne and Deacon exchanged a knowing glance—Glory must be working on Jeanne’s half-baked idea of  folding synth runs into Minuteman trade routes.

Preston paused at the edge of the garage, looking down at cracked concrete like he was collecting his thought. Then he looked up at Jeanne, his face tight, hands fidgeting. “That’s a hell of a generator you’re building, Jeanne,” he said.

“Gonna power the whole Commonwealth,” Deacon said. “Get it linked in with the power lines at Abernathy and bam! We’re live. You think I could get my own radio show? ”

She elbowed Deacon with a shake of her head. “We can stop pretending it’s a generator now,” she said, leveling a look at Preston, trying to gauge his reaction. Would he be mad? Concerned? It had been fairly obvious, she thought.

Preston nodded, looking relieved. “Whatever it is...just make sure it’s safe, all right? For you, for the settlement.”

She nodded and then she lied through her teeth. “I will. Promise.”

Jeanne turned away from Preston’s searching gaze to go poke at the dying fire. Sparks flew skyward and for a moment only the hiss and crackle of burning wood filled the silence.

She glanced over her shoulder and Preston smiled gently, dropping his eyes. “Thanks for dinner,” he said.

“Any time,” said Jeanne. “And thanks for the games,” Jeanne said. She glanced at Glory with a little smirk. “And the attempt at wine.”

Glory huffed, loitering at the edge of the firelight. “That was bullshit. Next time, it’ll be rum. Rum never goes bad.”

“They make bathtub wine over at the Slog,” Deacon said. “Really fine stuff. Maybe we can take a field trip. Wine tasting. I know a guy who knows a guy who makes brahmin cheese.”

Jeanne made a face he grinned at her, hands shoved into his pockets. They all stood there for a moment, and Jeanne squished a hit of annoyance that they weren’t already gone. She had a mission to prep for. RJ and Cait would arrive soon if they made good time.

“Sure,” Glory said. “The Slog is on our list of settlements.”  

Jeanne and Deacon exchanged another look and Preston coughed.

“Night,” he said. Turned and headed the road. Glory walked backwards for a moment, waved and then turned back to Sanctuary.

Jeanne breathed a sigh of relief as she watched them go. A bit of alone time, finally. Well, alone with Deacon.

“‘ _Our list_ ’? Huh.” Deacon scratched his chin.

Jeanne fed another log into the fire, watching Deacon from the corner of her eye. The first time she'd brought up her idea, it had not gone well. That night down at Murkwater Construction had been an eye-opener for her in regards to Deacon. Found a button or two. How he didn't like the Minutemen. How deep his history with the Railroad ran. How little she really knew about him.

“I think I got Dez convinced to ally with the Minutemen,” she said, feeding the fire more wood so it started to blaze again, throwing heat and light into the blue darkness.

Deacon settled down by the fire. “You’re a real negotiator,” he said. “Did you threaten to stab Dez if she didn’t listen to your schemes?” His glasses caught the flames, glowing night for a moment as he tilted his head at her, wearing half a smile. She wondered what his eyes looked like behind the glasses, how exactly he was looking at her.

Jeanne smriked. “Wouldn’t be a Death Bunny if I didn’t.” She thought back on her HQ conversation with Dez ,and the ones from earlier today, the serious whispers and emphatic gesturing, all knifeless, except perhaps for the mutual dagger-glaring.

She stood next to the fire, wavering between sitting where she stood and going to settle next to Deacon.

“Hey,” he said. “Go grab my bag? We can read while we wait for the dynamic duo.”

She scoffed, hiding a smile. “Too lazy to get it yourself?”

“The way I see it, you’re the one standing up. My back hurts. Give the senior citizen a break?” He stretched, his spine cracking audibly. “Check the side pocket.”

She rolled her eyes and did as he asked, finding his bag against the wall of the garage. She found two books on the top of his side pocket, a thick, dog eared volume with a rabbit on the cover, the other one which he’d read to her the night before, _The Jungle Book_.

“ _Watership Down_ … or the _Jungle Book_?” she called out.

“Your pick, Fix!” he called back.

She took a breath, wondering which one he might want to read. If he even wanted to read, or if he was just appeasing her, keeping her occupied. Handling her. She swallowed down the thought and stared down at the books. And then something pink caught the corner of her eye. The dress. She tugged it out of his bag and held it up. Red streaks of blood splattered across the chest, a bright ruin, and she frowned. Deacon had looked... amazing really. Broad, tight shoulders. His neck, collarbones exposed. Down his flat chest, the drop waist and his legs, and…

It was a shame Marowski had ruined the dress. It was her fault. The whole bloody mess was her fault. Impulsive. Vicious and righteous. Just like it had been her fault, killing that solder back during one of her worse ops. Not holding him hostage. Not thinking of anything but ending Marowski, punishing him for his crimes instead working throughout the best way to go about completing the mission. But if she’d had to listen to one more word of what he’d done to that synth… She wanted him to hurt. Suffer.

“You start reading in there without me?” Deacon’s voice made her jump, and she crumpled the dress in her hands, spinning, but he wasn’t at the door. Still by the fire, just out of sight.

“You’re giving me tough choices here,” she called back, heart thudding. God, she felt like she was fifteen again, stealing from her papa’s liquor cabinet. “Talking jungle animals, or talking rabbits.” She glanced around, spotted her bag on the other side of the room. She grabbed one of the books, not bothering to look at the title, and dashed over, shoved the dress in her bag. Took a deep breath and composed herself, tucking her hair back behind her ears and smoothing the front of her shirt.

“What’d you pick,” Deacon asked when she returned to the fire.

“Uh…” she flushed, realizing the didn’t know which book she’d grabbed, and glanced down to find a drawing of a rabbit staring up at her from the cover. “Watership Down.”

He looked up at her, eyebrows raised as she stood over him like a frozen idiot. Part of her wanted to sit where she stood, close enough to press against him to fight off the evening chill. And because he wouldn’t be coming on this Gunner-killing mission with her, RJ, and Cait. Three days. The longest they’d been apart since she got back from the Glowing Seat. And the other part of her told her firmly to go sit on the other side of the fire, or at least a few feet away.

“Enjoying being taller than me, or are you just trying to give me a sore neck?” he asked.

“Ugh. Your sass is in rare form tonight,” she said. “Stop picking on me.”

“Never,” he said. “You’re too easy.” Deacon pulled the book out of her hand and tugged her down to sit next to him. Her knees folded and she sat, goosebumps on her arm as his fingers let go of sleeve.

“Read this one before?” he asked.

“When I was a child,” she said. “It terrified me. The evil rabbit? The fight at the end…A lot of blood.”

Deacon tisked. “I thought you liked blood. Considering how often you're covered in it. But, yaknow. Everyone thinks rabbits are cute, fluffy little guys but if you’ve ever seen two full-sized rad rabbits fight…” He shuddered. “Bloodthirsty things. I gotta say, I admire them. Everyone underestimates them.”

He flipped open the book and started to read about talking rabbits, one with powers to see the future, one who could run and tell stories. One who was a great leader, and one who was a great fighter. How they ran from their doomed home, apocalypse via humans, but when they ran towards the promise of a new utopia they found things weren't so simple. The gentle drawl of his voice normally pulled her right in, but Jeanne was having trouble concentrating. It wasn’t the story, not the talking rabbits or the silly voices, or his reading. It wasn’t even the relay, lurking just outside of her immediate thoughts like a colossal shade. It was more the way the fire made her face feel too hot, and how their shoulders weren’t quite touching, how their knees kept brushing.  She shifted a bit, hugging herself as he turned the page.

“There’s a note here,” he said, and Jeanne tried to get her brain to focus on his words as he cleared his throat. When he spoke again he sounded professorial. ‘ _Rabbits can count up to four. Any number above four is_ hrair _\-- "a lot," or "a thousand." Thus they say_ U Hrair _\-- "The Thousand" -- to mean, collectively, all the enemies (or_ elil _, as they call them) of rabbits -- fox, stoat, weasel, cat, owl, man…’_ ” He paused. “Wow. That’s some deep rabbit lore.”

“It’s wonderful,” she said, managing to haul her thoughts back to the story, and away from how close they were sitting. “I don’t think I appreciated this book for what it was when I was younger.”

“Yeah,” Deacon said. “It’s a good one to read out loud. It flows really nicely. Good characters, too.”

Jeanne looked at him in surprise, sitting up a little. He looked like he was somewhere else, maybe lost in the throes of a memory, a trail of thought she couldn’t follow.

“You like reading out loud,” she said, her voice soft. Trying not to startle him. Not quite a question.

He blinked and shook himself, smiled. “Oh, you know. Beats talking to myself,” he said in his best _‘I’m deflecting’_ voice. “Even I run out of things to say sometimes.”

“Yeah,” she said, wondering who else he’d read out loud too.

And what it would take to make him run out of things to say.

 _Bet I could make you speechless._ The thought crept out from the shadows, from under the rock it had been quietly waiting under, and grabbed her by the ribs, crawling up to her throat to form a lump so hard it hurt. She bit her lip against a little laugh, trying not to cringe, trying to shove the thought back under the rock where it belonged, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Something funny?” Deacon said, and she looked up to find his glasses aimed down at her, his mouth half quirked. Her eyes darted to his lips, the firm, thin cupid’s bow of his upper and full lower. That smile with his crooked laugh lines. A nice mouth. She knew just how it felt against her own, warm and firm, hungry, smiling.

“Yeah...” she said, trailing off as an impulse struck her.

She leaned into him, their arms pressed together and he smiled down at her. She felt a wave of affection for him, despite all the bullshit. She didn’t really care anymore. She was on the Railroad’s side already. His side. And no matter the reason he did all those things he did for her, she knew he was in her’s. In her corner.

Her eyelids grew heavy, brain swimming with static. A haze gathered at the front of her face, burning with pinpricks growing stronger as she turned into him.

“You might wanna clue me in here, Fix, because I haven’t said anything funny in about five min—”

She shifted, braced one hand on the broken asphalt, leaned up and kissed him. He made a noise of surprise at the tentative press of their lips. They sat suspended like that for a moment, and there was no swell of music, no birds singing or angel choir, just the quiet of a Wasteland night and the crackle of the fire, the distant buzz of some giant mutated insect, the bark of a feral dog. The shaky exhale of her breath against his lips. And then Jeanne fell back, gazing up at him.

“Minutes...” he finished.

The blood rushed to her cheeks so fast it was almost painful. They stared at each other, and Jeanne’s chest rose and fell in a rapid pant, not sure if she wanted to run and hide her face for the rest of her life, or grab him and kiss him again. His glasses obscured whatever passed over his features. Surprise or desire, or confusion. Regret. She could only guess.

"I'm sorr—" she started to say.

And then he grabbed her by the shoulders and their mouths crashed together.

He exhaled hard through his nose, breath fanning over her cheeks. His mouth pressed hard against hers, moving slow and heavy, opening to her so she felt a hint of wetness, the taste of him—he tasted like mint masking cigarettes, like jerky, like gourd blossom, like Deacon.  She pressed closer, trying to swallow back a little moan at the feeling of his tongue sliding against her lower lip. The noise was enough for him evidently, because he pulled her closer, sliding an arm around her waist, fingers digging into her side.

He pulled more noises from as that first desperate kisses became smaller, tentative ones. She brought her hands up to rest on his shoulders, one sliding up his neck to cup his jaw, reveling in the way it worked against her hand as he kissed her. Sandpaper stubble, no more than a shadow against her palm. He needed a shave, but she liked the roughness under her fingers. Her mind fizzed, realizing she’d been wondering what would felt like under her hands when she wasn’t soaked in booze, too intoxicated to feel anything other than turned on—not that she wasn’t turned on, as a heady lurch in her stomach reminded her...

She pulled away a little and he chased her, pulling her back in, his mouth hungry, working over hers until their kisses grew desperate again, going broad and sloppy, his teeth against her tongue, hers against his lower lip.

“ _Crisse_ ,” she whispered, the swear escaping against his lips in a soft sigh. “Dee…”

He inhaled sharply and shifted away a little to look at her, poleaxed behind his glasses, mouth slack, and she laughed, giddy at the lingering feeling of kissing. She’d missed kissing. But Deacon. 

“Deacon...what are we doing?” She forced the words out, feeling lightheaded and silly.

His fingers curled into her hip, and she slid her hand back against the tension in his jaw. She resisted the urge to pull his glasses off, see what his eyes would tell her, figure out what the hell he was thinking.

“Ah. I think it’s called fraternization, Fix,” he said. His thumb worked its way under her shirt, rubbing little circles at the small of her back, her skin responding with a ripple of goosebumps.

Her back arched at his touch, the sensation. “Yeah. That’s usually frowned upon in clandestine organizations,” she said with a little shiver.

“Generally against the basic rules of agent conduct, yeah.” His crooked grin promised trouble— “Besides, you’re like, 200 years too old for me.”

“I am _not_ old!” She bristled at him, but before she could retaliate he pulled her into another kiss.

“But you’re really...uh... _fetching_ ,” he whispered against her lips, “so I’ll overlook it.”

And she laughed. Melted against him. He thought she was really... _fetching_? For fucks sake. The husk in his voice belied his attempt at humor—god, that he was such a dork sometimes. And she liked it, sometimes. A warm little glow built in her stomach now, climbing up her spine and down into her core. She gave herself to the kiss, like she did at the Rexford, demanding all of his attention with the press of her tongue, sucking on his lower lip, her own parted, making him groan. He found her tongue with his, warm and wet and in moments she herself halfway in his lap with his leg between her thighs.

“Ah...Fix,” he mumbled, “seriously though—”

She spoke over him, gasping as he mouth pressed against hers, soft and sweet. “Do you want—”

He bit down on her lip and she shuddered. Then he worried at the spot, slowing this kiss, soothing the bite.

“Dee…” she said, trying to get the words out. “D’you want…” She pulled away. “Do you want to fuck?”

His eyebrows flew skyward and it was his turn to laugh. “Wow, Fix. You don’t beat around the bush, do you? I’m usually down for a quickie, but don't you have another social engagement—”

“There’s a bed,” she rushed on. God, she was an idiot. Sounded so desperate. Trampling through this like a teenager, blurting out propositions like she was necking with her first girlfriend in the back of her parent’s sedan. “Blankets. But that’s stupid. This is stupid, right?”

“Totally stupid,” he said. “Let's be stupid.”

Her stomach lurched in surprise, expecting to be wholly and emphatically turned down. The absence of a 'no' sent her skidding into his next kiss, soft and easy, almost pulling away as he slid his leg from between her thighs and went to his knees. His hands traveled up her body as he stood, not lingering anywhere in particular, just brushing up her hips, going to her elbows pulling her with him. He had to stoop a little as she stretched up to kiss him again—Jeanne forgot sometimes how short she was, and her toes nearly left the ground as she slipped her arms around his neck and he straightened up, walked her backwards.

Stumbling, pawing tentatively at each other, they stumbled toward the little room with the bed. His hands roamed over her body, brushing a breast, her hips, coming to rest on her ass, pulling her closer. Her back hit a wall—the doorframe of the little room with the bed, and he stopped, huffing.

“O.K.?” she said, settling back on her feet. She couldn’t stop looking at him, the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed, his shoulders under his plaid, the shape of his jaw. _Fetching._ For a second she was back at the Rexford, imagining him walking in on her while she touched herself, the way his voice might have drawled. God, why had she _lied_ about it all? 

He nodded, swallowed again, and smiled. “Very. Go sit on the bed.” A lazy demand. No please. Not a request.

Jeanne's eyes widened and her balled into fists, planted on her hips as she stared up at him. “So you’re giving orders, now? ”

“Is it really an order if you were going to do it anyway?” His voice went low as he dipped his head to look into her eyes. She caught her reflection, bent and dim in the lenses and huffed at him. It really wasn’t fair the way his glasses worked. The way he was a two way mirror.

“Bossy,” she said, mouth twisting into a pout, but her legs obeyed. She backed away from him until the back of her knees hit the bed and she sank down. She watched him as her hands drifted to the zip on her pants, and he stilled.

It wasn't fair that she couldn't see his eyes. 

She tugged her jeans open and kicked off her shoes and socks. Trying to resist simply sticking her hands down her pants with no preamble.

And then, as if reading her thoughts he murmured, “Touch yourself…”

She took a deep breath, kicked off her pants, cheeks burning, and spread her legs, ran her finger up the thickness of her bare, pale thighs, digging in her nails a little. Her heart pounded as she passed her fingers up her center, over the thin fabric she still wore. She felt a hint of wetness and she gasped as she pressed down. Slid her hand up and then back down past the waistline of her underwear. _Slow,_ her thoughts told her, but _crisse,_ she was so wet. _They should be going slower than this._ But Deacon watched her from the doorway like a statue save for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He took a sharp breath as she pressed deeper, past her outer lips, sliding her fingers up and down her own slick heat, and bit back a little moan.

Like the sound jolted him out of a trance, Deacon lurched forward. She scooted back on the bed to give him room, fingers faltering as she adjusted while he bent, knelt between her legs. Hesitated, and then placed his hands on her thighs, pushing her legs further apart. Her skin warmed at the feel of his palm stroking down her leg, stroking her thigh like he was petting her while he considered his options.

Then he glanced up from where her hand worked slowly. “You like dirty talk?” he asked.

Jeanne suppressed a shiver as she toyed with herself, fingertips flirting with the bud of her clit. She hummed in thought, her breath a little jagged, but not too far gone that she couldn’t give a little back. “I’d like to see how good you are at it,” she said, looking up at him from lowered lashes, her mouth twisting. Pouting at him. 

He sniffed, offended, frowning down at her. “You doubt me.”

“What’s the—ah…” she lost her words when her fingers found a sweet spot, her back arching a little, and his fingers . “...the expression? Money...mouth…”

“I can think of _lots_ of things to do with my mouth,” he said, sliding his hand up her thigh to brush over the hand she worked between her legs.  “No caps required.”

Her fingers sped up as his hand passed over her's, snaking around her waist. “ _Crisse..._ ” She huffed, her brain scrambling for a reply to one-up him, but Deacon pressed his lips to her ear, throughly shutting her up.

“Can I tell you all the things I wanna do to you?” he whispered.

She nodded, mute as his fingers dug into her thigh, her waist, breath a hot, wet rush against her ear. She couldn’t move, couldn’t quite breathe.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Please.”

“If there’s something I say that you don’t like, just say no, okay?” He dropped the sexy-drawling thing a bit, sounded a bit more like the Deacon she knew, and a bit...less. A bit more open. Kinder. 

Jeanne shifted, sliding deeper between her legs and then back up to work her clit agai, her fingers wetter than before. “Okay,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll tell you.”

“Anything I should know? Things you don’t like?” he asked against her ear.

Jeanne humed, trying. “No choking. For obvious reasons.” _Not till the bruises heal._ She quashed the thought. The next time, maybe...

He kissed her ear in agreement. “‘course. No need to add insult to injury. Anything you _do_ like?” Then his tongue replaced his lips, coaxing a surprise moan.

“That’s a good start... ahh. I like. Would you… Pull my hair,” she whispered, a faint flutter of embarrassment in her stomach.

He chuckled against her ear and brought his hand to her temple, running his fingers through her hair a few times, and she leaned into the sweet sensation, wondering if maybe he didn’t want to—and then he balled his fist into her hair and she yelped a little at the pain. Sharp, clear, making it easier to stop thinking so much. Start feeling.

He paused a moment, like _he_ was thinking. “How wet are you?” he said.

Jeanne whined, eyelids fluttering. “What a rude question,” she said.

“I’ve got a vested interest, here,” he said. His fingers went tighter in her hair, demanding an answer. 

“Why don’t you find out?” she whispered. Another surge of heat made her shudder as her fingers grew insistent on her clit.

He hummed, sounding delighted, and he crawled onto the bed, pulled her along. Her hand grew erratic as they shifted, losing rhythm as she sped up to chace the surge of pleasure, off balance, and then he fell back, drawing her with him so she straddled his waist.

Deacon half smiled up at her, laugh lines around his mouth growing sharper. “You look good up there," he said, now a little breathless himself. His hand found her thigh and then slid it up to press against her cunt from over her underwear, following her fingers. Hummed again, groaned a little, making he her shudder all over again.

“That’s it…Good...” he murmured and she glowed at the words, fingers speeding up, her head tipping back despite her sore neck. “You’re good at this,” he said. Clever fingers pushed the crotch of her underwear aside and he groaned as he slid his fingers along her cunt, alongside hers.

“Ah.. so many compliments,” she whispered. “But what about you—” she whispered.

“How many fingers?”

“Try one,” she hissed as he started following her like he was learning a rhythm. “It’s been...a while. After the... Ah... Go slow.”

Deacon nodded, his mouth working silently as he found her opening, sliding a single finger inside of her. It slid in easy, and she sank down on his hand with a moan, accepting him as he pushed deeper. Curling his finger inside of her experimentally.

“Aw, fuck,” he breathed as he started to thrust with his hand, slow and easy. She whined, wished she could see his eyes, not daring to voice such a request. Deacon licked his lips and started to thrust harder.

“Aw, fuck,” he said again, running his fingers through her hair, mussing it against her head. She leaned down, bracing herself on her elbow, the shift creating a new pressure inside her as he found a rhythm. “Tiger, you’re so fuckin’ tight,” he groaned. “I just—”

“Another,” she gasped, her body surging at the sound of the nickname he’d chosen for her, some time in the past few weeks. She couldn't remember when he'd first called her Tiger but...her fingers jerked hard against her clit so her back arched.

Deacon's lips parted as he did as she asked, working another finger into her and she sank down into the pressure. And then she jerked to a stop at a twinge of pain that lanced through her core. Pushed too fast. She hissed, wincing and he froze.

“Okay?” His face shadowed with concern, stroking her temple, brushing a damp lock of hair back behind her ear.

Jeanne nodded, biting her lip. “Just...sorry,” she gasped, the twinge subsiding. “Fine… I’m—” She couldn't quite seem to finish a sentence. "Just let me...ah." He held still and Jeanne lowered herself, taking his two fingers, the ache spreading through her core a good one this time. No pain. 

“Ahh, okay,” she managed to gasp, feeling herself start to tremble a little. Too much. Too fast. Still—she rocked her hips and he thrust his hand up again, slow at first and then harder so the sensation built and made her whimper little yes-es, meaningless things, begging him for more, his name.

“Fuck,” she moaned, panting as she rode his hand. “ _Crisse_ … Deacon...Dee… ah you feel like—fuck...”

He renewed his grip on her hair, pulled her down to worry at her ear with his mouth, his tongue, making it all too easy to imagine what it would feel like against her cunt, tongue sliding over her clit, all along her slit, her lower lips. He sucked at her earlobe and she imagined his face between her legs, moaning into her dripping cunt as he whispered filthy things, paying as close attention to her body as he did to everything else. She shuddered as the intensity of their combined hands, his tongue on her ear, all her fantasies mixing with the near-bursting pleasure rolled up her spine.

“Close already?” His breath cold against the wetness on her ear.

“M-maybe,” she stammered, her arm braced by his head, her fingers ghosting over the stubble across his head, tracing the curve of his skull, nipping at his scalp.

“But there’s so much more I wanna do to you. And we haven’t even gotten to _me_ yet.” He changed his grip on her hair, pulling her head down so it rested on his shoulder.

Her fantasy shifted. Her turn to make him moan. She didn’t know what he liked, how he liked to  to be fucked, but she knew she wanted to fuck him, have him tell her just what to do...if he even liked that sort of thing. He could be stone, or—

“What d'you… like,” she panted, begging him to give her something. “Tell me… please, tell me?”

“Well...you like dick, Tiger?” he asked, like he read her thoughts. He was too good a mind-reader.

She nodded against his neck, another whimper escaping as the nickname sent another wave of delicious chills through her. Her fingers worked harder, brushing against his driving hand at every stroke.

His next words were more hesitant even as he kept working between her legs. "You like cunt, too?”

She nodded again, this time more vigorously, a warm glow in her stomach as he gifted her some sort of orientation towards how he liked to talk about his body. She wanted to touch him, make him feel as good as he was making her feel, ached for it.

“You’re in luck, then,” he whispered, kissing her ear. “You’re getting me all hard and wet, watching you want me, feeling you so fucking tight around my fingers.” He raked his fingers through her hair and he let out a little groan,  deep and throaty against her ear as she ground down hard against his hand. “That mouth of yours? I want it all over my bits.”

Jeanne jerked and faltered, snorted a laugh. “Your _bits_?”

He chuckled and kissed her ears. “I can think of more adorable euphemisms for my junk if you’d like. Don’t really care what you call em, as long as as you want to stick your face between my legs.” Then he twisted his fingers inside of her, hitting that sweet spot, cutting off any sensible reply.

Her back arched and she hissed as a shock of pleasure shuddered through her. “I do... Ah... _tabarnak,”_ she muttered. They were too entangled, too much negotiating, too much she didn't know for them to go there. But she wanted him to feel good. “Dee, would you touch yourself? Can you—”

“Mmm,” he murmured. “You’re so full of good ideas.” His voice was thicker now, and his had dropped from her hair to snake around her waist. He lifted his hips, creating more pressure as he finger-fucked her, relentless even as he unzipped his jeans against her ass, slid his free hand down. There was a pause, and then he made a sound of utter relief.

“I wanna fuck you with my mouth, Tiger. I bet you taste so good,” he muttered into her ear. “I’ll lick you, suck you until you’re begging me to let you cum.”

“Ah...Dee, please…” _Tabarnak de crisse,_ he was _already_ making her beg. The warm glow got hotter and brighter as an orgasam started to build under their combined fingers, and Jeanne waverd against it even though her body wouldn’t let her slow down, her fingers no longer frantic but strong and rhythmic. She made shameless noises against his neck, her pulse thready, hard in her ears. He pumped his hand harder, pushing deeper inside her, making her stretch around him, her own fingers working in tandem to spread the bright, electric heat in her cunt down down her thighs, flooding up into her core.

“Please,” she whispered. He _had_ mentioned begging…

“Oh man, Fix,” he murmured into her neck. His breath tickled along the shivery goosebumps already there, lips brushing her skin. Careful not to press down on the still-sore bruises ringing her neck. “You’re really that close? We just started...”

Another flush of embarrassment rose in her cheeks. She felt like a fumbing teenager, morified and enthralled by her first fuck. Except as a teenager she  She nodded against his neck, whimpering, afraid if she spoke she’d break the moment, lose the orgasam that was building between her fingers. “Another finger,” she begged, “Dee, fuck me…please make me cum...”

He took a shaking breath, pressed his lips into the spot behind her ear, and she felt his arm quicken its pace behind her, working his own pleasure, each stroke ghosting gently against her ass.

“I don’t wanna be done with you yet…” He dragged his nose, his lips, up to her ear. “But under the time-crunch…” He pushed up into her with a third finger, his voice forced against her ear through clenched teeth— “C’mon, Fix, come for me? There’s a good—”

Her cry cut him off as she fell forward, unable to hold herself up any longer. She lost all sense as she came in bright waves of pleasure, honey sweet and just as slow. Deacon’s hand thrust up again and again between her legs and he turned his head and captured her mouth with his, covering her shameless noises with little moans of his own. Below her, his back arched and his arms clenched, rubbing himself harder with his other hand like her climax brought him closer to his own. The thought made Jeanne’s body surge again, harder this time as his fingers slowed deep inside her, making her ache and shudder, cries falling against his slow, sloppy kisses.

“Shhh,” he soothed, with a shaky breath, as if she had control over anything other than riding out the force of her climax, her limbs trembling, her core throbbing as he carefully withdrew his fingers from her cunt and straightening sopping twist they’d made of her underwear. His fingers lingered between her legs for a few moments, pressing his hand over hers before he withdrew.

She whimpered, her whole body thrumming, blinking back from semi-consciousness. Calloused, curious fingers ghosted over the curve of lips, smelling like sex, and her tongue darted out to taste herself on him, tangy and salty-sweet. He groaned as she sucked a finger-tip, and his palm cupped her jaw, his fingers still working between his own legs, more slowly now, almost absently, like he wasn’t trying to go anywhere with it, not trying to come, just enjoying the sensation.

Her aftershocks eased slowly as he kissed her, tasting her lip, each press of his mouth small and soft, the noises they made small and soft, until both the noises and the kisses faded away and Jeanne simply hunched over him while they stared at each other, both struggling for breath, his ragged as he worked his dick, his cunt—his words—her's falling in shuddering little gasps as she tried to regain some composure.

He half-smiled as she broke the stare, tumbled sideways to lay beside him, limbs trembling. She pulled her hand free from her underwear, straightening her knees with a groan at the ache in her legs reminding her that she’d been kneeling for...how long? Five minutes, probably. Not that long, really. Almost record time. Definitely record time with a new partner. Felt like five hours.

Jeanne’s eyes wandered down to watch Deacon work himself, although his hand and his jeans obscured most of what he was doing. She saw the slick wetness on the head of his cock, hardly thumb sized and erect, and her fingers twitched, wanting to join his hand, wanting to slide down his body and fill her mouth with him. Maybe he’d let her... he’d said...

She looked back up, studying his profile. The bald curve of his head, the slope of his forehead, those obscuring glasses. His nose, broad and short. Lips parted, the cut of his jaw, his chin. He didn’t look at her, head pointed at the crumbling ceiling as his hand moved between his legs, his other arm curling around her shoulders so she tucked close to his side. From where she lay she could see his eyes clearly; they were closed, brows drawn into a frown.

She flexed her still-slick fingers, and urgent ache started up in her chest as she watched him, the same ache that had possessed her when she's given into kissing him. She wanted him. Closer. He felt far away, even though she pressed half naked into his side. God, it was going to be awkward. Fucking him was going to ruin everything there was between him unless she did something stupid to make him laugh.

She reached over, wiped her sticky fingers on the front of Deacon’s shirt, grinning.

He blinked a few times as if coming-to and his head rolled towards her, his mouth falling open in mock outrage, still breathy as his hand kept working between his legs. “That was _rude_.”

She snickerd. “You’re filthy. Look at you, you’ve got stuff all over your shirt. You smell like sex.”

He rolled over a little and leaned in, pressing his nose to her cheek. “ _You_ are so—”

A hail from outside cut him off, made them both jump. Deacon’s hand flew from between his legs, his other gripping her arm.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Time’s up.”

“ _Osti de tabarnak…_ ” she hissed. “Dee, I’m sorry… I can tell them to go—”

He grinned crookedly at her, the old Deacon she was use to coming back through his daze. “Nah. Company’s here,” he said. “Better get some pants on.”

“I wanted to finish—” she started, but he chuckled at her, sitting up and crowding her out of bed. Jeanne shivered as her feet hit the cold floor, cursing and shifting a little from foot to foot as she snached up her clothes.

She was a sopping wet mess between her legs, but there wasn’t anything to clean up with, even if she had time. She tugged on her jeans, hopping to get them up around her hips, jerking the zipper and fumbling with the button. She scrambled for her socks and shoes and pulled those on too, still cursing under her breath. Damn it, she wasn’t _ready_ for them. She should already be in her travel clothes. And she wasn’t done with Deacon.

He watched her with a faint grin and when she glanced over to him, raising a questioning eyebrow. He held a finger to his lips. “I’m not here,” he said.

Her eyes darted down to where his jeans hug open, though there was nothing more provocative to see than the edge of his underwear. Still, she raised an eyebrow and smirked right back at him.

“Why,” she asked. “Need a little private time?”

He shrugged, lay back with one knee bent, hands behind his head. “Maybe,” he said, and paused, “nothing I can do is really gonna compare, though.”

“Is that your sexy pose?” she asked, even as her brain went hazy, eyelids growing heavy as she blinked. _Compare to what?_

 _“Jeanne? Hey-o!”_ That was MacCready, the buzzkill. The call grew closer and she jumped again.

“I’ll be back in three days. Or less,” she said before he could retort.

“Be safe,” he said. “I’d hate to have to come scrape you off a Gunner’s boot. Not the best look.”

She hesitated, then closed the few steps between them and bent over his prone form, kissed his cheek. She heard him inhale a little breath, but before he could do anything, say anything, she turned and fled.

“There ya are!” Cait stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene around the fire. RJ was already sitting, poking at the fire and eating something from a wrapper. Chips, by the sound of crunching and the crinkle of a wrapper.

“Having a party?” he asked, craning his neck around to look at her.

Jeanne looked around as well. _Watership Down_ lay abandoned carelessly on the ground next to her duster, and playing cards and empty bowls littered the crate inside the dimly lit garage.

“Dinner,” Jeanne said, acutely aware of how frazzled she must look. Hair a mess, lips swollen, skin feverish. She smelled like sex. She must _look_ like sex. “Just woke up.” She yawned, only half feigned as the sated, sex-loving little part of her purred in satisfaction, making her movements langid. Making her think about how nice it would be to send Cait and RJ off to Sanctuary for the night and crawl back in bed with Deacon. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Get with it boss,” RJ said, “we’re on a schedule here. Who knows how much longer Winlock and Barnes are gonna be camped on the highway, or if the bastards'll move on.”

“Ach,” Cait scoffed at RJ. “They’ve been there a few days. Can’t see ‘em movin’ on so soon after settin’ up a camp. You gotta relax, sniper-boy.”

Jeanne grabbed her duster from the ground and shrugged into it. She hesitated a moment and then picked up the book before dashing off to the garage to fetch her bag. She heard the duo bickering outside as she placed the book on top of Deacon’s bag. Next to is she found the washing-up bucket leftover from dinner and gave her hands a quick scrub to rid herself of the lingering smell of sex, combed wet fingers through her hair, grabbed her helmet and her pip-boy, and then met her team outside.

“Ready,” she said, still a little breathless.

“Where’s your shadow?” Cait asked, looking around in surprise.

“Who?” Jeanne said, her expression mild even as she blushed and busied herself with checking over her gear and buttoning her duster.

Cait snickerd. “Deacon? You know. Bald. Or with that wig. Always with the sunglasses and funny clothes. The one who’s always followin’ you around, bein’ lurky-like.”

“Oh…” she looked up from strapping on her pip-boy and pretend to think for a moment, the shrugged. “He’s being lurky-like somewhere else, I think. Ready?”

RJ hauled himself to his feet. “Yeah. Let’s move.”

“Ya ain’t gonna put out the fire?” Cait said, still side-eyeing her with a funny look in her eyes. 

Jeanne started. Of course. She wouldn’t leave a fire going, or lanterns lit if there was no one around to need them. “Preston’s coming back down here in a bit. He’ll take care of it.”

Cait shot her another narrow eyed look, and the three of them headed east, towards Gunner territory. The Red Rocket disappeared behind them, and Jeanne's body buzzed in sleepy contentment and a bit of anticipation. The thought of Deacon back there, thinking about her, finishing for himself what they had started both tantalized her and made her gut lurch with guilt. She should have stayed...She shouldn't have lied. She was going to have to make it up to him...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that went well.


	22. The Damn Spot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for attachment/abandonment issues, dissociation/depersonalization, demisexual feels.

Deacon

He lost Jeanne’s voice first. Soft spoken, it never carried far. Mac griped something and he heard Cait’s raucous laughter before they all faded.

Deacon fell back against the mattress and managed a breathless laugh, wiped a hand down his face, rubbed his eyes from under his glasses, took a shaky breath. He smelled like her. Everywhere. A surge of electric need throbbed down his spine, into his core, reminded him that business was left unfinished.

He half wanted her to come back through the door. The other half wanted her long gone so he could figure out what the _fuck_ had just happened. Besides the first time sex has sent his brain through the roof since… well. It had been a long time.

The situation in his pants accelerated with startling ferocity and hand strayed back between his legs. Pants still unzipped, Deacon palmed his crotch, pressing harder against the packer, which in turn pressed against his dick and he swallowed a moan. It wasn’t going to be enough—the wet, hard mess between his legs wouldn’t be satisfied with just a hand. _His_ hand.

 _Fine._ He’d have one good, self indulgent wank and then forget all about how it felt to bury his fingers inside of her. How dizzyingly easy it had been to work her up to that perfect, shuddering climax. Find a find a way to push her firmly back into partners-in-crime status.  Friend status. Friends _without_ benefits status. Thick as thieves. Thieves who didn’t fuck each other senseless. Because there was no benefit to being more than friends. Just _being_ friends with Deacon was sketchy at best.

The kiss on his cheek, a simple, sweet afterthought. Then gone. The weight of his hollow, oppressive arousal demanded that she come back, made him wonder how good her mouth would feel around his dick, getting him harder and bigger with each suck, each flick of her tongue. The way her the strands of her thick, dark hair would feel, running through his fingers, balled in his fist as he pressed her closer to his core.

Her blatant sexualty suprised him. Shocked him, even. _Fuck_ she was cute. Not just cute. She was adorable. Gorgeous. Sexy as hell. The way her lips parted, how she gasped when he said all those dirty things to her. Her wicked smile as she’d wiped sex-sticky fingers on his shirt. The smell of her—soft, earthy, faintly floral—still lingered on and around him, his lips and his fingers. His shirt. His hand worked around his packer, his lips parted as he inhaled sharply, eyes fluttering as his fingers brushed his aching dick through his underwear.

He knew all the other things Fixer was besides cute as hell. He espoused her virtues to anyone who would listen. His gushing used to be exaggerations to flatter her and ingratiate her to the Railroad, to him. Keep her off balance. Push her away with his disingenuous rambling. But somewhere along the way those little bits of praise, his idealization of her person became more than half-truths and assumptions. His bullshit was _right._ She’d proven time and again that she _was_ brilliant, and dangerous, and determined. Funny in a quiet way. Pride and justice warred within her and it was always fascinating to see if vice or virtue would land on top in any given situation. And she was so... sad. Lonely. And... apparently very horny. That amused him. And confused him.

And made her sexy as hell.

Deacon rubbed up and down his soft packer where it rode tucked in the pouch he’d sewn for it in  his underwear until it wasn’t enough anymore. He wriggled free of his jeans, bunched around his knees and slipped his hand under the band of his underwear. He thought of the way her lips parted against his neck, tension belying the soft lines of her body, whispering half formed words in a language he half understood. The sound his name mixed up with words from her other language, the one she really loved, falling against his ear in a warm, desperate rush.

He was hard and turgid and he rolled the sensitive head between his fingers, sliding the slick from his cunt and back up, pressing and stroking until his lower body tingled with white-hot pinpricks.

He was a little pathetic, all the stupid names he wanted to call her. It felt off limits. _Tiger._ _Baby. Sweetheart. Jeannie._ He whispered them anyway, fingers working harder, stroking down his slick cunt, and then back up to the swell of his dick.

She’d moan, that low sweet sound that seemed impossible coming from _her,_ caused by _him,_ and he’d bite her neck, right where it met her shoulder. Once the bruises faded, of course. He turned his head, his other hand pushing his glasses up his forehead before wiping it down his face, catching the scent of her lingerie on his fingers, his shirt.

His free hand wandered down, slipping under his shirt to play with a nipple, small and tight, but it didn’t feel right. All his need was concentrated around his hand, rubbing his swollen dick with hard, demanding strokes, feeling his packer against his wrist and the back of his pumping hand.

Maybe he’d cup one breast, than the other, rolling a fat, hard nipple through the fabric of her bra. Pure conjecture, what she looked like under there. Slip his hand under it to find out how soft her skin was. He wondered if her breasts could possibly be any softer than the skin on the inside of the thighs hed stroked just minutes before. He didn’t think it was possible for there to be anything in the known universe softer than the skin on the inside of her thighs.

And her body. Fuck. He knew her, the shape of her. Little shoulders, heavy breasts, the roll of her belly covered in puppy fat and stretch marks, thick thighs that were more muscle than anything. Sweetest little hands and feet. Sensitive, pouting mouth, a smile that went on for days, when she managed a real one. Sometimes she managed a real one just for him. He knew how to get her to smile now.

She was devourable. Or would be. If Deacon was the devouring sort. Which he was not.

But... he wanted to know what her mouth would feel like sucking down on his dick, how he’d thrust up into her as her tongue swirled, teasing him into near climax.  He knew just what he _wanted_ her mouth to feel like...how her cunt would feel grinding against him, getting as close as they could...

Deacon breathed hard, sifling a heavy moan as the thought sent a quake through his body, back arching, toes curling. His hand sped up, and the other joined in, sliding along his cunt to gather slick until he reached his ass, teasing sensitive skin, a hint of tight heat. That was all he needed, the heat of a climax bubbling to the surface. His back arched, his dick throbbed and pulsed against his fingers and he groaned curse. His dick pulsed again and he punished himself, too sensitive for how hard he bore down until he gasped and jerked his hand away, the sudden absence of pressure sending him into a floating void of release.

And he lay there for long minutes, staring at the ceiling. For a while he felt good, bright and heavy and sated, but as the minutes stretched on the proportions of his body grew odd and awkward, his mind filled with vacuum. Brain and body became two different entities that should belong together but didn’t quite fit, both enormous and very small at the same time. Deacon watched as cracks in the ceiling grew arching and jagged like wounds instead of crumbling plaster. He rain his finger-tips across the blanket she’d spread over the dirty old mattress, again and again, the wool so hyper-rough it set his teeth on edge. One of her blankets. Smelled like her.

The weighty lurch of reality asserted itself, but that too-big too-small feeling made him fit awkwardly in the little space of the real world that he should occupy. He lifted his hips and tugged his jeans back up, not bothering to button them. After a moment he reached down and pulled out his packer, just a soft cylinder of shredded rags sewn in fabric—this one yellow with little blue flowers—and set it aside. Kicked off his boots, took off his glasses, let them clatter to the floor.

A wave of exhaustion hit him—bone deep and welcome in the face of his key-in-the-wrong-lock feeling. He turned his head, tugged the blanket up from under him and balled it into his arms, burying his face into the scratchy, well-worn fabric. Her smell, all over the blanket, ten times stronger than in the air or lingering on his clothes: leather and petricor and earth and _Fixer,_ from the months of use on the road… combined the scent of their sex on his fingers… he pressed his lips to his knuckles, inhaling the mixed smells of sex and the pure innocence of what was just her, clinging to her blanket _._

And he remembered that she was about to disintegrate herself and hopefully wind up in the Institute. All to find her son. And maybe to help synths. All maybe because he’d pushed her towards this. Which meant in some ways he was responsible for her. Anything that happened to her. 

And  _maybe_ she'd come back. Big maybe. 

He closed his eyes, and drifted.

~~~

Normally Deacon would have taken the long way ‘round Sanctuary, where so many people knew his face, knew he was Deacon. But Glory and Preston were off doing their Minutemen allied Railroad shit, and besides, there was some masochistic part of him that wanted to walk by the relay. Again. Like picking at a scab, pretending to be surprised that he kept bleeding worry and anticipation, disbelief each time he saw it. So many years… and _he’d_ never found a mention of teleportation. Never heard PAM mention it, though it felt as if she could even predict the arbitrary affects the movement of the stars had on.

Sanctuary buzzed around him, the settlement in a state of flux Deacon hadn’t seen since he’d spent a year in the Capital Wasteland. The Commonwealth was notoriously sleepy, with no-one lifting one more finger than they had to in order to insure survival. And yet, here it was. Change, a sense of momentum. People building proper houses, trying to cleanse the land, make something grow.

In his heart, Deacon wanted to attribute the momentum to Fixer in some way. Her pre-war magic, some kind of psychic paradigm shift, like the stars moved _her_ and the Commonwealth followed. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. Maybe the Railroad revolved around her now, with her relentless discoveries and pushes for operational change. She’d propped up Garvey enough to make something of the Minutemen as well, but Sanctuary? The growth of settlements? That was all on the General.

And it looked good on him. Looked good on the Commonwealth. And it gave Deacon hope. That maybe the work the Railroad was doing wouldn’t be in vain. Because in the three-legged race the Railroad was running against the Institute, the Railroad really had like, one and a half legs, and the Institute had more like, unlimited legs. It was a bad scene.  

Deacon’s feet carried him up the cul-du-sac to the little blue house. It called to him, stirred a need to revisit those first few moments he’d had, investigating who the hell had come out of Vault 111. And then he remembered having their first real talk, right up the hill, when he’d shown her the observation post and she’d told him about the hell that her pre-war life and been, and his feet stalled. Even walking through Sanctuary felt like trespassing, now that he thought about it, open settlement or not. This was _her_ place.

If he wasn’t going snooping in her old house just for funzies, he needed to do _something._ Take a walk. Blow off a little steam. Maybe take some pot-shots at some watchers.

Deacon glanced around. There was hardly a familiar face in sight as he headed north, past the relay site, not with Glory and Preston off hanging out with robot farmers and Dez and Tom ensconced behind their junk fence walls, scrambling to finish the relay. Codsworth puttered around in a distant vegetable patch. Marcy Long passed without a glance in his direction, pipe rifle cradled in her arms. She moved with purpose, her hollow face set and focused. Must be on guard rotation. Must be good for her to have an outlet that involved protection, and shooting things.

Deacon forced himself to start moving again, before anyone took note of the weird bald guy gawking at Jeanne’s old house from behind his sunglasses. His feet carried him north, past the junk fence relay site. A glance up confirmed all he needed to know: it was there, it was big, and it was almost ready.

His eyes lingered on the top of the relay protruding above the junk fence, even if his feet didn’t slow, carrying him into the trees, growing thicker as he climbed the hill to his little hunting blind where he’d first waited for Fixer. The vaultie. And then later, when he’d first wrapped a arm around her, let her cry out all the stress and fear. Tell him her story. Pieces of it. He glanced at the ally railsign and heaved a sigh.

Deacon had really set himself up for his current predicament, hadn’t he? Too blind to see how deep he’d gone, so fast. Gone way, way outside of standard operating procedure. Long before last night. Since she’d clocked him in Goodneighbor. Maybe since a little before. He scrubbed at the back of his neck. He had to get out of here. Out of Fixer’s life.

The woods were quiet even as his thoughts seethed. He brushed past the hunting stand and down into the gully between it and the vault, skidding a little as his boots lost traction. He jogged down the rest of the hill and hiked to the road that would take him to the vault.

He needed a lie. Something to sever them. After all the work. The _hard fucking work_ he’d done to get to this point, to get her to trust him and the Railroad, turned out he’d been accidentally building something in himself he’d never intended. At this point the trust between them was solid. It would take a well calculated blow to shatter it.

Betray her trust utterly. That was it.

Deacon fumbled for his pack and pulled out a cigarette, sparked his lighter and took a deep drag, ignoring the twinge in his left lung and exhaled a gout of smoke that hung still until he wafted it away with a careless hand.

He worked for the Institute. She couldn't trust everyone. No—while heartless, the lie he constructed couldn’t damage his reputation with the Railroad. He paced, his feet carrying him to the vault, just down the hill from his blind.

He could tell her he was using her. Like. Sexually. Or whatever. He partnered up with plenty of Railroad agents and it always went this way. They got close, they’d have some fun, Deacon would get what he wanted from them, and he’d left a trail of broken hearts across the Commonwealth. Explained all the face-swaps. It was dangerous to have so many exes. No—he couldn’t make her feel worthless. Besides, she would call his bluff. He was far too sweet on her to pull off that bullshit. That first kiss by the fire had practically made him black out from shock.

He’d have to utterly ruin himself to drive her away. He’d gotten attached. And un-attaching was for her own good. And his. No matter how good of a kisser she was. How sweet on her he was. And it was going to ruin him a little. He wasn’t sure how...

He could just tell the truth.

That he wasn’t able to do what they’d been doing. The bed-sharing, the… kissing. The intimacy. He’d lost that privilege a long time ago, when he’d lost Barbara. When he’d _let Barbra go._ He wasn’t worthy, but Fixer would fight him tooth and nail on that, indignant in the face of his own hard-earned self loathing.

And Barbara. She’d been closer lately. The ghost of her lingering, watching him, asking him if he was finally going to forgive himself, when he’d let it go. _Twenty-something years._ It was probably about time something turned his life upside down.

His feet hit the steel decking of the vault entrance, echoing dully. He had no pip-boy with him. Couldn’t go inside. Look at the end of Jeanne’s world.

And what about the end of _his_ world _?_ It had ended with Barbara.

The accusations. He’d fought them on it. She wasn’t. She _wasn’t._ Even after they had her up there, like she was already guilty of the crime of _being_. Being a synth. Like her very existence was in debate and he just. Watched, because.

Because he didn’t know.

That was a lie. He’d known _exactly_. Exactly that he loved her and it didn’t really matter, she was a person no matter what was there, she was innocent, there was no crime.

And he sat there. Watched them accuse her. They ran their tests. The sick, scared, selfish part of him that lived in every person in the Commonwealth rose up and watched in morbid fascination.

And his silence killed her.

Rope around her neck. Dangling feet. A bloodless death. Only one way to tell. Break her head open. But they didn’t. Couldn’t be wrong so they never looked. Couldn’t have blood on their hands. But Barb’s blood was all over _his_ hands. Forever. Insert something Shakespearean here about blood and his inevitable damnation.

_Out damned spot! Out, I say!_

He had to burn it. The house he’d built with his own hands, their carefully collected books he’d read out loud to her every night, the old-world gizmos she liked to take apart and modify, put back together in new and endlessly fascinating combinations.

And then. Real blood all over him, after. Her killers’ blood. His own, chem-fueled blood pulsing in his ears. Chems, and booze, and wandering, losing time, trying to decide if each person he met was a synth or not. He could never tell. Never. There was only one way to tell. After that, not much came clearly for a good long while. Months or years. Not sure what was real, fake. A fluke, or flight of fancy. 

Memories were lies, because truth happened only once, in the present moment.  Each subsequent remembering morphed the truth into a new story. Memories were lies people told themselves. That’s all memoires were. Lies. Lies and stories.

So he’d tell Jeanne _that_ story. Not a lie except in that _he_ would never really know the whole truth of it.

And what would alienate Jeanne—proud, loyal, noble Jeanne—more than if he’d been a bigot who’d let his wife die because he was too afraid that _they_ might be right, that she might be a synth. That she’d replaced his real Barbra. That it hadn’t mattered because she was _always_ Barbara. But it did, if the original Barbra was gone, that she’d suffered. That maybe she’d never been a synth, he’d never know because when he dug up her body from the collective graveyard, taken her and washed her dead body and buried her under her favorite tree, he couldn’t bring himself to break her open, look inside her head, see if the synth component was really there. The one thing that could get at the truth, and it was too unthinkable.

So he never made sense of it. He never would. But he had to, now. He’d find a coherent narrative. Tie it all together in a neat little bow with an ‘I’m terrible’ tag attached to it. Hadn’t Jeanne said her birthday was in January?

_Happy fucking birthday, lovely. I’m a very bad person._

And she might hate him, find him repulsive. Because he was. But that was better than the alternative. Which was that she trusted him. Which she apparently did.

Deacon snuffed out his cigarette and flicked it into a pile of garbage. And then the back of his neck prickled. A moment later he heard the soft hiss of propane being burned, the gentle clicking of machenry, and he turned, 10mm out of its holster before his brain registered who hovered before him.

“Mx! Please… Heavens, I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that. But you looked to be in deep concentration and I didn’t wish to disturb you…”

If Codsworth had hands, he’d be wringing them, but instead his arm attachments faltered back and forth like the limbs of a twitching, mechanical insect.

“You should think about signing up for the Railroad, with stealth skills like that,” Deacon said. He slid his sidearm back into the holster on his thigh, relaxing into the pose of someone _not_ contemplating committing emotional suicide by brainstorming ways to get his best friend to hate him.

“There is nothing I’d like more, mx—” Codsworth started.

Deacon waved off the gender-neutral honorific. “It’s just Deacon,” he said. “Mx—or sir, or ma’am—those make me feel like my old man.” Not that he remembered ever _having_ an old man, but he’d always enjoyed the expression.

“Deacon, then. As I was saying, you’ve no idea how much I’ve wished to accompany miss Jeanne on her travels.”

“Yeah. That’s _definitely_ a good way to get shot. Was there something you wanted? Or are you also up her taking in the vestiges of old-world hubris? I’m thinking of starting a roadside attraction thing, adding Vault 111 to the list of the Commonwealth’s Biggest, Most Boring Mysteries.” He tapped his boot on the textured blue decking, the sound making a dull thunk-thunk as he spoke.

Cosworth pressed on, ignoring his blather like any sane person would. “You now, I couldn’t help but notice you taking a little walk—you seem quite distressed, for someone normally so collected—”

Deacon hunted his pockets for another smoke and lit up. He let the flame burn a moment before flicking the lighter closed with a snap of his wrist, annoyance growing with every syllable Codsworth inflicted upon him.

“Distressed? Nah. I just do my best thinking when I walk. Working on the next great American novel… the last one was published in, what? 2063? After that there was all downhill, from what I’ve read. Trash and propaganda. And then, you know, a few mega-ton a-bombs. A little over 250 years overdue for a new classic, don’t you think?”

Codsworth whirred at him. “Quite. I understand why Miss Jeanne is fond of you. She always did like people who could make her laugh.”

“And you would not _believe_ how hard it is to get her to laugh,”  Deacon drawled, punctuating his words with a plume of smoke. “I was considering taking up clowning to get her to lighten up a bit…but clowns scare the bejesus outta me.”

“I shall be frank, Deacon,” Codsworth said, sounding like he wasn’t going to be frank at all. “I haven’t survived out here for 200 years from of sheer luck.” The bot drew himself up proudly, a stiff upper lip pose if Deacon had ever seen one—which he hadn’t, only read about, but still— “I’ve fought off radroaches and bloatflies, raiders, mole rats.” Codsworth paused as if for dramatic effect and his optic apertures narrowed at Deacon. “Even scavengers.”

A little ripple of paranoia climbed up his spine at the word _scavengers_ and he pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, arched an eyebrow upward, plastering on a smirk over his surprise, even as it dawned on him why he was being cornered by this particular Mister Handy. Fixer’s Mister Handy. Fixer’s pre-war Mister Handy.

Robots always made everything so damn awkward.

He wished he was standing on the edge of the woods instead of on the edge of the Vault platform. He felt guilty, like he was caught in the act of… whatever it is he was doing. Interloping.

“If there’s something you want to say, say it,” Deacon said.

“Forgive me, m... Deacon. I don’t mean to be impudent, but I’m intruding upon your privacy because... Well. I can’t help but be worried about Miss Jeanne’s involvement with your organization. She pushes herself very hard, you see. And you seem to have gotten closer to her than the others.” He paused. “And please… I’ve only just gotten her back, and she’s leaving again. I’m quite distressed about her well-being.”

“She’s going to get Shaun back,” Deacon said. The smoke burned the back of his throat, mouth dry. The annoyance fizzled as quickly as it had flared. Codsworth had known Fixer longer than anyone else alive. Of course he’d be worried. Of course...

“Undoubtedly,” Codsworth said. “Mum’s always been quite the stubborn one. And young master Shaun? We hardly knew him. There was hardly time for the four of us—” He seemed to choke on the words, a stutter in his speech processing. “I’ve had 200 years to get used to being alone. Miss Jeanne....What she must be going through…”

Deacon forced his hands not to clench, took another drag. Almost smoked down to the butt now. “Yeah, well.” He sighed a last gout of smoke. “She’s basically got the whole Commonwealth in the palm of her hand at this point. And she’s tough.”

“Indeed,” Codsworth said. “She never wanted for people… The ones she became close with were… very important to her.”

Deacon rolled his eyes. “This concerned father act might have been the way things rolled in the old world, pal.” He dropped the butt down onto the steel decking, ground out the cherry with the toe of his boot. “She needed to find the Railroad. So here I am. Friendly wasteland tour guide. Fixer’s a grown woman. Making her own decisions. She’s doing all of this—” he gestured vaguely, feeling like the only thing ‘this’ could mean was himself— “to get her son. That’s it. She just needed some help.”

Codsworth swelled with all the considerable indignation a British robot butler could muster. “Miss Jeanne hasn’t let me look out for her one bit, but I intend to keep on caring for her however I can. And if that means keeping an eye on someone who has grown close to my mistress, who has _not_ engendered my trust...” He trailed off, all three eyes trained on Deacon.

Deacon simply let the mild tirade wash over him, ignoring the spur of guilt that lodged somewhere in his chest, the ache almost as uncomfortable as the sensation of air leaking into his chest, unable to breathe—

“I’m not really in the habit of engendering trust,” Deacon said lightly. “Bad for business.”

“And would that business happen to be showing up in Sanctuary the very day my Mistress emerged from the vault?”

He’d been waiting for the words since Codsworth uttered the word ‘scavenger,’ just before. “What is this, a who-done-it? _”_ he snapped. “I’m a _spy._ And Fixer’s no angel either.” The words hung in the air between them, the thought of who Fixer had been before the war. A _terrorist,_ she said they’d called her. Running anti-invasion black ops. Killed a lot of people. It was a nice reminder that that no one was innocent, not even for the right reasons.

Deacon worked his jaw a few times, “I’m kind of impressed you knew it was me.” He laughed a little, soft but managing to sound less bitter than he actually felt. Another beat of silence. “And that you pretended not to.”

“Indeed. It takes more than a wig and a quick costume change to fool me.” Codsworth sounded smug, twisting a little on his thruster. “Why were you there?”

“There’s this old saying you might know,” Deacon said, jaw tight, feet braced and ready to bolt like he was expecting a blow. Or the buzz of a saw blade. Or the blast from a flamethrower. “‘The enemy of my enemy...’ You probably know the rest.”

Codsworth stilled, watching him intently. “Indeed. And are you friends?”

“Fixer is a better friend than I deserve,” Deacon managed.

“Then maybe you should try being worthy of her,” Codsworth said. They stared at each other for a long moment, and Deacon didn’t trust himself to speak. Anything he said would be either the truth, running out of him in a pathetic tirade, or lies he wasn’t quite prepared to tell. Besides, those lies weren’t for anyone but Fixer.

“This is me,” Deacon said through his teeth, “Very politely asking you to leave.”

“Well, Deacon,” Codsworth whirred at him one final time. “I’ve enjoyed our talk, and bid you a good rest of your morning.” Then spun on his axis and drifted away without another word.

Deacon stood there for a while, replaying the conversation over in his mind a few times to make sure it had really happened. The thing that bothered him most was that he hadn’t seen it coming. Had somehow forgotten Codsworth was a variable in all this, the only person living who had known Fixer _before._ The last of her family. Codsworth and Shaun.

Was it because Codsworth was a robot, with AI programming instead of the old fashioned meat-and-tubes? Well...tubes that weren’t vacuum tubes. Deacon wasn’t usually so quick to discredit robots though. He and PAM were pals, right?

Right.

So he’d miscalculated. Forgot a variable. He could never really forget that Fixer was pre-war, but sometimes he forgot what that meant. That she had _stuff._ People. History. That he’d never really understand what exactly it had been like for her to live before the bombs had gone off, no matter how many dusty old books he read.

Okay. So…

Deacon tugged off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut against the warm morning light and erratic shadow filtering through the trees.

He had three days before she got back. And very little to do. He’d offloaded most of his dead drop routes to other heavies, spent the past two months working directly with Fixer and prioritizing whatever would lead them to the relay.

So so he had. And here they were. Goal achieved. Vaultie firmly, _hopefully permanently,_ on the side of the Railroad, primed and ready to fling herself into the institute like a rematerializing cannonball. It had all gone better than he could have dared hope. _And_ he’d ended up liking the vaulite, to boot.

So why did he feel like he needed to find a small, dark, quiet space to go cry?

 

~~~

 

Jeanne

The last gunner fell with a jerk, folding to the ground in a graceless heap. Jeanne watched him fall, half his head gone, and then pulled her eye from the scope. She hummed under her breath as she expelled the spent cartridges with a jerk and reloaded her rifle, and then pulled off her helmet.

“I’m almost jealous,” RJ said, popping up from his spot behind a van door. “But I got seven and you got five, so…Best sniper status… secure.”

Jeanne scoffed at him, feeling loose and content even as she picked over the closest corpse for anything interesting.

“Oi! Jeannie!” Cait called over. “Getta load of this!”

Cait stood 100 meters off, on the other side of the tumble-down overpass, waving a piece of paper.

Jeanne did a quick body scan as she drew even with Cait, and winced at the state the woman was in. Jeanne and RJ were mostly untouched—just a few burns and singes from energy weapons, a graze of a bullet on Jeanne’s thigh, but Cait was covered in scorch marks, and bright rivulets of blood ran from a few deep cuts on her arm. Jeanne was already running mental tirage when Cait turned to her, pupils blown wide from the poison she’d been shooting into her system during the fight.

“Looks just like ya,” Cait said, breathing hard as she thrust a blood-smeared paper at Jeanne.

Jeanne pinched the paper between two fingers and held it up, and then snorted a laugh. The likeness of a familiar helmet stared back, and large letters blazed below it.

WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE. 250 CAPS

She shifted her helmet from under her arm, holding it out to compare with the picture. “They got the angle of the rebreather all wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “ _Tabernak..._ Looks like I will have to retire my signature look for a while. I wonder why they’re targeting me now...”

Jeanne’s brows knitted as she ran through through each encounter she’d had with the Gunners. Marowski employed them. Wasn’t wearing her helmet when she’d taken him out, though. She’d had a few dust-ups here and there with the gunners, though. She thought back to the courser fight. The captive synth. Letting one Gunners live, pressing her helmented face into his. How she’d promised she’d take out the synth trade ring. Which she had.

Well, that explained it.

Just one more trouble to add to the pile of things would happily ignore in favor of getting inside the Institute….

She folded the paper and tucked it into an inner pocket, thinking she’d show it to Deacon. He’d get a good laugh out of it. Rib her for only being worth 250 caps.

“Let’s loot this place and head to the Slog for the night,” she said. “The General said they’d be having some trouble with super mutants.”

“You got it boss,” RJ said. "And thanks. For helping me take care of Winlock and Barnes. Gonna rest a lot easier knowing they're dead." 

~~~

“Ya ain’t doin’ embroidery here, darlin’” Cait growled at Jeanne. “Just stitch it and ditch it.”

“I _would_ if you held still,” Jeanne snapped at her, for the third time. She almost had the worst of Cait’s cuts sewn up and dressed, but the woman was wearing thin of patience, kept twisting around to watch the goings-on at the Slog instead of sitting still so Jeanne could finish cleaning up her injuries.

Even beyond her restlessness it wasn’t easy going, because Cait kept _bleeding._ Long past when she should have stopped, given the stim she’d taken earlier. It was the twice cursed Psycho, making her blood pressure skyrocket, even as she came down into a more mellow Med-X high. The careful self prescribed cocktail of a high-functioning addict.

Jeanne added another neat suture to the cut, holding the two flaps of skin closed with a delicate press of her thumb and forefingers. Cait didn’t finch as the needle slid in and out of her skin—so many pale scars stood out along her defined arms dotted with freckles that Jeanne doubted Cait’s perceptions of pain approximated those of an average person’s.

“Finished,” Jeanne said when she tied off the final suture. She flushed the area with water and mopped up some of the blood with a rag.

“Ah, maybe you were doin’ embroidery after all?” Cait twisted her arm to see the word. “Ain’t had stitches that nice since I got to see a real Diamond City doc…” Her voice trailed off, eyes going distant for a moment. “Comin’ to you next time I need a patch-up.”

“You can come to me anytime,” Jeanne said. “Though I might start charging a fee if you don’t _sit still._ ” She wound a bit of cloth around the newly sutured wound to keep it from collecting debris until it stopped sleeping. “When do you usually stop bleeding, after getting a slice like that?”

Cait glanced down at her arm. “Takes a couple hours, sometimes.” Jeanne opened her mouth to ask if it was always like that, but Cait clicked her tongue “What’are you, a doctor or somethin’? If you’re gonna tell me it’s the Psycho, I already know.”

Jeanne rinsed her hands with the rest of the water and sterilized her tweezers and scissors, started putting her scattered supplies back in her med-bag. “Yeah. I _am_ a doctor. Was. And I wasn’t going to talk about your drug use.” She paused, looking up from shoving a ream of bandages back into the kit. “Not unless _you_ want to.”

“Ah well, _doc._ I don’t.” Cait stood abruptly, tossing her a dirty look, and wandered off without another word.

Jeanne sat back on her heels and huffed, but her thoughts already wander from her patient to their present location. The Slog was settling in the the night, the resident Ghouls who found refuge at the farm trickled in from the fields and the ingenious pool-turned-bog.

It was the cleanest settlement Jeanne had seen in her few months in the Commonwealth. Fields of mutfruit and mellon lined the concrete pool, and they kept radchikens, huge, near hairless rabbits—rad rabbits—and a brahmin, kept close to the pool house. People made cheese, milk, and all sorts of good cooking was happening. Jeanne could see why super mutants kept raiding, through Weisman said they always managed to stave them off before they could ruin the orchards or the bog, but they’d lost two brahmin in the past month.

Of course, the living conditions weren’t up up to Jeanne’s pre-war standards. The concrete pool house where she was planning to spend the night was dank and mildewy, walls wet and dripping water even without rain, and there weren’t enough beds for all the farmers, let alone for visitors. She, Cait, and RJ would all be sleeping on the floor tonight. And she’d be cold, because she’d forgotten her damn blanket back at the Rocket.

Jeanne grumbled to herself as she strapped her med bag to her backpack. And then she paused. Looked down into the jumble of clothes and gear and junk she’d taken with her on this little trip, with no time to get organized the night before, in her rush to… run away from Deacon. And on the top of her backpack sat the pink beaded dress on top of all her other things.

Jeanne stole a look over her shoulder before pulling the dress from the bag. It was silk, she realized, as she took in the finer details. The fabric was heavy enough to support delicate bead-work but the drop- waist skirt still flowed gently as she held it up. It would have been vintage, even in her time. She ran the fabric through her fingers, letting it shigh across the bare skin on the underside of her arm and imagined how it would feel to slide her palm up his thigh, pulling the dress up as she went, fingers curling around the hem—

Jeanne cleared her throat and frowned, turned her mind to puzzling over how she could save the dress. The stains were a deep rusty red-brown now, stiff and crumpled across the chest and stomach. Blood could be removed with some water—carbonated if possible—some very diluted soap, and patience, but the stain would be impossible…It wasn’t like there were any Abraxo stain remover sprays lying around anymore. Just the powdered cleaner...

The pale pink, almost rose of the fabric would be easy to dye, though, since it was silk. It looked like silk. Cross-cut, the grain of the fabric highlighted by the beading. It was basic chemistry to dye natural fibers, right? The right pH, the right fabric, the right temperatures....

“What’s that you got there?”

The voice made her jump, and Jeanne turned sharply to find Cait standing in the doorway. She resisted the urge to tuck the dress behind her back, letting it dangle from one hand instead.

“Just repacking,” Jeanne say, smoothing her expression into something that might approximate unconcern. Like she hadn’t been fodling the dress her partner had worn during a mission and wondering when else he might want to wear it. In private. Just for her. Or. Whenever he wanted to. Not for her. If he didn’t want to. That would be fine, too.

Cait raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, propping herself against the doorway. “C’mon. You were literally just sighin’ over a pretty pink dress.”

Jeanne glanced down, her mouth twisting. “You have any advice for getting blood out of clothes?”

Cait stalked forward with a catlike smile and plucked up the end of the dress so they held it between them. “Sure,” she said. “A bit of abraxo, some cold water. Ain’t gonna help the stains though.”

“Do people in the wasteland... dye clothes?” Jeanne knew how stupid the question must sound.

Cait gave her a funny, narrow-eyed look. “God, _vaulties,_ ” she said. “You have like, replicators or something? A machine that just makes stuff for you? ‘course we dye stuff. Never done it m’self but…” Cait dropped the dress and gestured around. “We are on a farm. With lots of colorful produce…”

Jeanne’s eyes widened. Of course… There had to be someone around here who could tell her how to dye a dress. “You’re brilliant,” she said, not quite able to suppress her grin.

Cait sputtered a bit, her face going red, mouth working silently. “I can’t believe I’m givin’ textile advice to an idiot vaultie,” she muttered.

“Want to help?” Jeanne asked, but Cait just scoffed.

“I’ll watch you struggle,” Cait said, still huffing and frowning, but she followed Jeanne out into the Slog.

They found Weisman making dinner, and he quickly pointed them to a ghoul who sat under a patio umbrella, serenely knitting some odd, smooth yarn as she watched the farmers pack in for the night and settling down for dinner.  

“Pardon,” Jeane said as she approached. “Angie? I, uh—Weisman said you could help me with some dye?”

The ghoul beckoned her over and held out her hand. “Let’s see,” and when Jeanne handed her the dress she went very quiet, running the fabric through her hands much the way Jeanne had before. Presumably without the impure thoughts about Deacon’s thighs…

“This is a very beautiful dress,” said Angie. “You want to save it?”

Jeanne nodded. “I don’t even know if it’s possible, with the blood, and—”

The ghoul clucked her tongue. “Blood is nothing. What color?”

“I…” she trailed off. “Uhm.” She hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Just wanted the evidence of blood gone. “ _Maudit…_ what colors could I dye it? What’s even possible without—” she was about to say old-world chemicals but the ghoul interrupted her again.

“You could do reds, greens, grays, blues.” She paused, squinting up at Jeanne. “Yellows and oranges, too. Not your color, though.”

Jeanne faltered again. She wasn’t thinking through this process properly. Only wondering if giving the repaired dress back to Deacon would make him happy. God, and _how_ would she give it to him?

Blue eyes. She’d seen them a few times now, just little glimpse. Bright, bright blue. “Uh. Blue. Gray…” she cleared her throat. “Blue-gray. Like… uh—” Like what? “Like slate?”

The ghoul nodded. “Red would cover the stains better, but… whatever you wish. Need vinegar as a mordant—that’s a dye fixer, and the dye bath, of course. I can make up a blue-grey dye for you, and I’ve got some clear vinegar from the last batch I made. I’ll write you instructions on the process.”

“Thank you,” Jeanne said, feeling slightly less stupid for even considering such a... _frivolous_ endeavor.

“Don’t thank me. Pay me,” said Angie, and Cait snickered. “Fifteen caps for the dye. Twenty-five for the vinnegar.”

“Of course,” Jeanne said, flushing a little. It honestly hadnd’t occurred to her to _pay_ for the information. Or supplies. Wasteland currency still baffled her. Who decided that _bottle caps_ were a good way to pay for anything? She supposed they didn’t rot, and they were abundant enough. But what were they worth? A single US dollar? Inflation had rendered a single unit of US currency almost worthless. A dollar was nothing. But a cap? Were caps based on any real currency standard? Did caps experience inflation? Could the Commonwealth market crash? An economist would have a field day with the nonsense concept of money in the wasteland, but then again, money had been nonsense _before_ the war, so perhaps it was fitting.

Jeanne paid out from her purse, fingers fumbling with the handfuls of caps. Angie stared at her for a moment as she accepted the money, raising a hairless, withered eyebrow. Then she clucked her tongue, muttering something about ‘vaulties’ and ‘clueless’ as Jeanne baked away.

“You suck at bartering,” Cait said. “Could have gotten all that for what? Thirty caps total?”

“And you didn’t say anything?” Jeanne huffed crossing her arms as she resisted glancing back at Angie and her lapful of knitting and caps.

“Again, I enjoy watching’ you struggle,” Cait said. “But enough.” She planted her fists on her hips, a manic sort of gleam in her eye, looking like she was about to go ride into battle. “Let’s see about gettin’ the blood out.”

It turned out that Cait was an expert in blood-removal—which wasn’t shocking—but was a disaster at handling delicate fabrics. She had a slight hand tremor, and after soaking the dress in mild detergent and cold water, she passed the reins over it over to Jeanne with a huff of frustration. Jeanne took over working out the crust of blood with diluted detergent, until she was satisfied with the results. A few rinses in cold water and she gently wrung out the dress, careful of the beading, and hung it up to dry.

After that, dinner. A communal affair lead by Weisman. MacCready joined them for a bit, but he seemed cagey and bothered, and wandered off to scout super mutant territory soon after. Jeanne let him be, and thought about cheese. If she had cheese, she could try making some poutine with fried tatos and...whatever gravy she could invent. She’d have to buy some on her way back to Sanctuary. The going rate was apparently about 10 caps a serving.

By the time they’d finished the evening it was well past dark and most of the Slog residents were headed to bed or already asleep. Jeanne and Cait settled in on the cold, damp floor to get some rest before the pre-dawn would see them up and heading for super mutant territory.  

The sounds of the wasteland night started to assert themselves as she and Cait lay in silence. The drip of condensation from the walls. A raspy cough from across the pool house. The buzz of some giant, irradiated insect off in the distance. Cait was quiet for long enough that Jeanne started to drift. Then she rolled over to face her, and Jeanne’s eyes fluttered open.

Cait laid on her side, just a foot from Jeanne, watching her in the near darkness. “So, what’s your deal?” she said, her voice low. “You like girls? Boys? Both?”

Jeanne blinked at the question. Wondered where exactly this was going, cleared her throat. “Uh. I like everyone. I never saw gender as a barrier to attraction.”

“Interestin’,” Cait said. She reached over and placed a hand on Jeanne’s arm, trailed her fingers up, and Jeanne hummed, torn between shivery appreciation and apprehension.

“Jeanne… ‘m pretty damn frank about these things. You’re a gorgeous woman... Ya came into my life like a—” she fumbled for a moment— “aw fuck, I’m no poet. Mac helped me take over th’ Combat Zone an’ then you were there dancin’ with me. It’s been a hell of a few weeks. Still not sure what t’make of ya, but—”

Jeanne laughed softly, placed her hand on Cait’s and pulled it away from her arm. Gently. Turned her down gently. “I… can’t,” she said. “I’m not in a good place right now. For that.”

“Yah?” Cait shifted away. “Ya seem like you’re in a good enough place to crawl right on top of me…”

“Cait…” Jeanne put a hint of warning in her tone. “My life is very complicated.”

“Got someone else, then?” Cait rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

Jeanne huffed, still on her side. It had been twenty-four hours, and all she wanted to do was go back and check in on Deacon, see if he wanted to finish what they’d started. Kiss him again. Crawl back on top of _him._ The thought started a warm little hum in her chest and down in her gut, and she smiled before she could stop herself.

“Yeah, thought so,” Cait said, head turning back towards her with a little laugh, watching Jeanne was a wry smile. “Your weird, wig-wearing shadow isn’t as subtle as he thinks. I’m pretty sure ya nearly gave him a heart attack when ya took out Marowski. Pretty sure you almost gave _me_ a heart attack, come t’think of it.”

Jeanne groaned. “No,” she said, brain scrambling to think up a lie. “We’re partners. Working partners. That’s it—”

Cait burst out laughing. “For spendin’ so much time together you think you’d be a better liar. C’mon. Dish.”

Jeanne’s cheeks burned and she stared at a spot on the wall, watching the slow drip of water catch the light. “Truly, Cait. I’d be interested in crawling on top of you if I hadn’t just crawled on top of...well.” She huffed. “Yeah.”

Cait burst into a fit of laughter, shoulders shaking. She curled up, rolled on her side, facing Jeanne again. “Oh..” she gasped. “I knew it. I _knew_ it. Ya were just crawling off him when we showed up, weren’t ya. No wonder you had that ‘I just fucked’ look.”

Mortification burned in Jeanne’s cheeks now, and she wiped a weary hand across her face. “I don’t know what to do…” her voice was more a whisper.

Cait went quiet for a moment and all Jeanne could hear was the drip-drip from the damp walls, forming a grim, arrhythmic tick-tock that made her flinch, filled her head with irritation and the first creepings of causeless anxiety—Now that she thought about it. Now that she wasn’t filling every moment with something—killing Gunners, dying dresses, stitching up wounds, she could admit it. She was a little spooked by the whole thing. And how she wanted it to happen again.

“So it was the first time, then.” Cait said,  still sounding amused. “Soon as I saw you to together, I assumed you were already fuckin’.”

Jeanne snorted. That night in Goodneighbor. Dancing, drinking. Sudden undercover, sudden kisses. Then Nate’s tape. And she’d lied. Without a though. It wasn’t fair to him that she pretended not to remember when really what she wanted was to crawl all over him…

“I’m a mess,” she said quietly. “My husband was murdered about…” Jeanne paused, though through how to explain to Cait what had happened to her family and still sound sane. Linearly, Kellogg shot Nate ten years ago. _If_ the Institute wasn’t fucking with her. _If_ her timeline was correct. But to her mind, it had been four months. Four months, and she was already throwing herself at people. If she hadn’t just...thrown herself at Deacon, she’d be all over Cait right now, certainly. Her life was a soap-opera in the making.

She cleared her throat. “He was murdered about four months ago. The Institute did it. And they stole my son.”

“I’m—that’s a rough draw, darlin’,” Cait said after a few beats, the soft lilt of her voice carrying a sincerity that sounded ill-fitting but genuine.

“I’m trying to get my son back. Even if we can’t go home…”

“I thought you were from a vault?” There was something defensive in Cait’s voice now, almost accusing.

Jeanne let slip a little sigh. It had been easy to tell Glory. Glory was impossible already. A synth. A perfect blend of human and machine. Glory could believe anything. She was created from science that looked like magic. Preston had met her while she was still in shock, stammering, full of questions. Piper and Nick needed to know in order to unravel the mystery of why her son was supposedly ten years old. And Deacon? He’d known since the day she’d burst from the vault. She shivered at the memory, the clinging cold.

Would Cait understand? Or even care?

The delicate touch of fingers on her wrist made Jeanne jump, inhale a little. It was a different touch than the one before, more a comfort than a solicitous inquiry.

“Sorry… sorry.” Caits fingers were warm on Jeanne’s clammy skin. “Look. Ya got some secrets. I get that… But you’re the first person besides Mac who’s given’ me the time of day, for no reason I can sort out. Pretty much ever. Didn’t mean anything by comin’ onto you like that. I just. It’s nice t’ spend time with folks who don’t want anythin’ from me but the dubious pleasure of my company. That’s it. Really. The least of it.”

Cait’s words rang with bitterness,  quiet and hollow and they made Jeanne’s heart hurt a little. Made her wonder what had happened, to make her say such a thing. Jeanne made a quiet noise she hoped sounded thoughtful, and slipped her hand into Cait’s, squeeze her fingers before letting go. Cait grunted and rolled over so her back was to Jeanne, and the conversation ended as abruptly as it started.

Still, Jeanne felt a little warmer. Little touches, reminding herself these people were real, that the wasteland was real. That she’d be going to get Shaun. But she’d be coming back to _them…_ to the people who had helped her, who she’d helped. Cait and RJ. Piper, and Nick. Dogmeat. Preston, Glory. Tom and Dez and the rest of the Railroad. And Deacon She could come back to them. If that’s what she wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Deacon backstory. Was always sad that FO4 didn't have more content with the Salem Witch trials, so. Tie that into some synth hysteria and there we go. Stay tuned!
> 
> Also huge thank you to Kallika for rescuing The Dress. You are my costuming consultant. <3 And thanks to EVERYONE who leaves me such lovely comments y'all make me so happy. :,3


	23. Good Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for mild gender dysphoria (bottom), emotional roller coaster, anxiety + all the stuff this chapter title implies.

Deacon

Deacon watched Desdemona wander Sanctuary for a while, getting the sneaking suspicion that she was looking for him. All the Railroad agents here moved tentatively among the settlers, who didn’t seem to notice them. Still, Dez moved like a wary molerat who hadn’t seen the sun for at least a year. Deacon wondered if that was actually an accurate estimation of the last time Dez had been outside…

Deacon let her find him after a few minutes of watching her peer into buildings. He propped himself up

“I don’t know if I’ve seen you this much, in this short amount of time. Ever.” She frowned at him. “Is Fixer ready?”

“Uh?” _Jesus. She wasn’t a fucking show-pony._ “Ready for what, boss? The big game?”

“If you want to call it that, yes.” Dez was tart as ever, each syllable sounding as if it had been sucking on its own individual lemon.

He’d missed this, really. Doing his damnedest to alienate and obfuscate.

“We’re almost ready. A few more days.”

An icy-hot fist, comprised equally of terror and excitement, punched into Deacon’s gut, but he managed a wan smile. “Feels odd, doesn’t it?” he said. “After all these years and all it took was Fixer.”

“She gets the job done,” Dez said. “And you’ve done an excellent job handling her.” Her eyes snapped up from the table, watching him closely. “She’s gone from scruffy outsider to the heart of the Railroad in three months. I don’t really want to know your methods, but if you could keep her morale up long enough to get her inside… Well, lets just say I have a good feeling about this mission.”

 _Handling._ When had he stopped _handling_ her and started being with her? Her actual partner. Her _friend._ When he thought back, the defining moment seemed to be Mercer. Still recovering from his near death experience. She’d given him _tea._ It hadn’t been particularly _good_ tea, but…

“Yeah, it’s gonna be fistfulls of sunshine and skies full of bottlecaps. Smooth reading. Easy sailing. Uh. Whatever other idioms you can come up with to mean ‘a piece of cake.’”

“Quite,” she said, measuring him with a look. “Can we trust her?”

Deacon stood up with a groan, his spine popping as he stretched. “As much as we can trust anyone. And hey, if we can’t, that’s why we’ve got a new home.”

“Will you be here for the teleport?”

Deacon shrugged. “Who knows.”

~~~

Digging through his bag, Deacon frowned, wondering again where the hell his dress had gone. He’d noticed it was missing when he’d changed between checking a dead drop and killing some raiders. It wasn’t like him to lose anything, let alone clothes, but perhaps he’d left it back in HQ right after the murder-party in Park Street Station… he had been _distracted_.

Still, it nagged at him.

~~~

There were too many variables. He wanted to talk to PAM, but the miraculous machine was in transit and he couldn’t be bothered to track her down with so many potential eyes on the area between Park Street and old HQ.

Worst-case scenarios: The relay would kill her. The Institute would kill her. She would do a face heel turn and betray the Railroad. They could hold her hostage. Hurt her. Somehow that seemed worse than betrayal. Almost as bad as death.

Any scenario was really worst case scenario unless she got out unscathed. Hopefully with her son. That she didn’t find any secrets there that would rip her heart out.

But she was hell-bent on going. And Deacon wanted her to go. Needed her to go. The Railroad needed her to go.

So, she’d go. But unlike Dez, Deacon had a really bad feeling about it.

Three days was 72 hours. He’d already wasted five of those hours sleeping. Whenever Fixer wasn’t around meant business as usual. Pre-Fixer business. And there was a big move in progress. A few heavies killing off the Triggermen and tommies set adrift by Marowski’s conveniently timed death. Ellie Perkins and Nick Valentine had already taken care of Skinny Malone months ago, so Vault 114 was up for grabs as a new and improved HQ. Which meant the Railroad didn’t have to live in a fucking _crypt_ anymore.

It always felt like bad luck, sleeping amongst the bones.

But Deacon had nothing to do with moving HQ, other than advising on the location and planning a randomized, customized moving schedule he’d dropped into the Boylston Club dead drop, the night he and Fixer had kissed in Goodneighbor.

So Deacon checked the dead-drops, killed some raiders who were trying to set up shop right in the middle of a saferoute. Cajoled some tourists. Spied on the progress people were making on the HQ move.

And Seventy-two hours slipped to thirty, and then twenty four, and then he was twelve hours late to rendezvous with Fixer, and the day the teleport would be ready loomed. Another seventy-two hour countdown and his internal clock ticked at him, first by the hour, and then by the minute, and then the second, louder and louder until he couldn’t put it off anymore.

There were no more dead-drops to check. No more routes to clear. No more synths to deliver from safehouse to safehouse. HQ had been moved save for non-essential persons and supplies.

Deacon wanted to wander. He felt the itch in his feet, to take off, maybe roam up the coast and visit the new settlements popping up, conduct an environmental scan of bigotry in the Commonwealth. Maybe go hang out with the Brotherhood of Steel for a bit, see if he should start putting some serious effort into sabotaging their foothold in the south. But his feet took him northeast, back towards Sanctuary, and the Relay. And her.

The clock ticked, and his mind kept wandering back to Barbara. How he’d do her justice in the telling of their story. And he definitely, certainly didn’t think about how Fixer would react. Or how it would feel when she couldn’t look him in the eye. Or be in the same room with him.

Fixer would have done it all without him. She didn’t _need_ him guiding her. She would have made it this far all on her own, pushed forward to the Institute, Railroad or not… and somehow it had turned his world upside down, helping her.  Flipping the script from the usual “save the Railroad” to helping Fixer get her son back, keep her safe, make her feel _good_ . They were one in the same goal now. And he wanted _out._

And then he saw her again. He expected to find her in Sanctuary or not at all, but she was at the Red Rocket.

He whistled as she came into view, and her head shot up from where she was hunched over the cook fire. Even from a distance he could see her grinning. She waved at him, brandishing a spoon, and he couldn’t help but grin in return, his heart hammering, his gut telling him to run.

She met him halfway. He watched her walk, looking for limping or any sign of injury, but she looked _good._ This was not agent Fixer, but home improvement Fixer. Jeanne. She wore an olive drab jumpsuit, her not-quite-long-enough hair tied back in a low ponytail, deep brown strands escaping to stick to her temple and her neck. Dirt and something that looked like grease streaked across her cheeks, her nose.

“Deacon,” she said, flashing him a quick smile he he couldn’t help but return. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

He bit back his quip— _‘been thinking about me, huh?—_ and shrugged instead, searching for something less flirty to say.

“Something smells good,” he said instead, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked around. “What’cha making?”

“Gravy,” she said. “Where have you _been?_ I was getting worried.”  

“Aw, you don’t have to worry about me, Fix. I only get in trouble when you’re around.”

That earned him a smirk that sent his gut flip-flopping and brain cursing his stupid, flirting mouth. Still, he saw Fixer’s eyes scanning his body in a fully clinical way, doing that mental triage thing she did.

Her eyes returned to his face. “You look tired,” she said. He supposed he was. He was back to his pre-Fixer sleeping habits, a nap here, a four-hour sleep there. Probably not more than twelve hours sleep in the past four days.

“Any news?” she asked, rolling her shoulders as she turned and gestured for him to follow her back to the Rocket.

“Nada,” he said. “All’s quiet.” _Except we’re moving HQ and you know nothing about it,_ he thought. “Dead drops are… well, dead. Packages are being delivered. I’ve been out walking the earth and telling bad jokes to tourists to keep up morale. And I’m sure your keeping up with the mad science project over the river and through the woods.”

“It’s ready any day now. Tom said tomorrow.” She trailed off and turned back to the stove so he couldn’t see her face. “I was thinking you weren’t going to come back before—”

That hit him in the gut like someone had tossed him a bowling ball. “Aw, Fix…” He clenched his hands at his side to keep from grabbing her shoulder. “I’m not gonna miss Tinker Tom’s finest hour. Do you know how long I’ve waited to see one of his hair-brained science projects actually work?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him with a skeptical little smile. “Such a sudden interest in science.”

“So,” he said. Change the subject, Dee... “What’s the gravy for?”

“ _Poutine,_ ” she said. “I’ve been experimenting.”

“Ah, finally giving into the poo-teen, huh?”

“ _Poutine,”_ she corrected. “Yes. I figure if I’m going to have a last meal it better be that. But I’m still trying to figure out how to fry tatos without them becoming mush.”

Fixer turned back to her cooking, and Deacon wandered off to drop off his gear, clean up, and change. Out of his dusty road leathers and into his brown plaid.

The Rocket looked even better than it had a few days ago. The rest of the garbage was gone, and there were two new workbenches in the garage, probably hauled down from Sanctuary. A quick tour of the place caused his eyebrows to raise. The outer room had been emptied, a shelf removed, and there was now a bed—it looked like _the_ bed from the other room—took up most of the space. It was neatly made with a few layered blankets and an actual pillow. She must be raiding Sanctuary to have done so much nesting in such a short amount of time.

Deacon poked his head into the back room— _the_ room—to find a smaller bed there now, twin sized. The right size for a child.

Deacon heard the soft pad of feet behind him and turned to find Fixer hovering in the doorway.

“Place is looking great,” he said, his stomach bottoming out, thinking about what she might need after she got back. Being a mom. _Not_ being his partner. “Thinking of settling down? Doing some homesteading?”

“Shaun should have a safe place to sleep when we get back.” Her face was placid, the pain that usually creased her features when she spoke of her son starkly absent. “I know all plans go to hell at first contact with the enemy. I might not get him back right away. But… I want to be ready.” She huffed, smiled, and it struck him, not for the first time, how goddamn _brave_ she was.

“You’re going to find him,” he said. “And we’re going to make them pay. For everything. Shaun… Nate.” He felt dirty, saying her dead husband’s name, but she nodded. “For H2. For every synth that’s ever been hurt because of them.” _For Barbara._

“Yeah,” she said, her brows knitting back together into her customary frown. “I’m looking forward to getting some answers.”

Answers. He glanced down at his hands, expecting to see blood and finding none. Still, he had a sudden urge to wash them. He clasped and unclasped them, shaking out the tingle of nervous energy that buzzed in his limbs.

“You have bad news.” Her arms wrapped around her middle, and she leaned against the door frame, thin arched brows knitted into a frown. Concern shadowed her eyes.

He shook his head, his smile probably less than reassuring. “Old news,” he said. “Ancient history really. But listen. It’s important.”

She studied him a moment, and he was sure she could see the guilt written all over his hands, see the whole story carved into his face.

“Would you like to sit?” she asked with a nod towards the bed.

Deacon’s knees bent before he even considered her question, the mattress sagging under him. Fixer edged around him and settled at the head of the bed, tucking her bare feet under her. She didn’t say anything, simply waited for him to speak.

Deacon swallowed. “So,” he said finally, dropping his eyes to look at his own feet, booted planted on the . “Your faith in the Railroad shouldn’t be dependant on me. I’m a liar. I make no secret of it. Everyone knows it. Truth is, I’m a fraud. To my core.”

She shook her head. “So, you lie. And I compartmentalize. But… you’re Deacon, and the Railroad’s the Railroad. There’s overlap, but it might shock you that I don’t keep you around just because you’re the backbone of a secret organization.”

That couldn’t be… it wasn’t— “Right,” he said. “That. Is a _little_ shocking.”

She smiled, small and crooked. Waited for him to go on.

“Okay. You’re a pro. I’m a pro. We’re pals. You…” How did he explain what she meant to him? _Why_ he was telling her his bullshit. She was in his head. In his blood. “You’re… I really appreciate you putting up with my bullshit.” He took a breath, staring down at his booted feet, hanging over the edge of the bed. How could words convey the horror he was about to unleash. That made it worse somehow. He took a deep breath.

“When I was young, a hell of a long time ago—” _Tell it like a story. Like it’s another lie._ “I had someone. Who loved me, for whatever reason. And I lost her. Because I’m… a coward. I was a bigot. Ignorant.” His jaw clamped shut so he had to spit his next words through clenched teeth. “Everything that’s wrong with this whole fucking Commonwealth.”

Fixer’s voice was quiet. “What was her name?”

His throat closed, wouldn’t let him say it. Not now. But he had to. He grunted like someone had struck him. Not— “Barbara.”

There. He said it. _Barbra._ Saying her name exhumed her, laying her bones bare. Telling the story he hasn't told anyone since before he’d been Deacon, since he’d been John D. And all those other people in between. Nigh on twenty years, and he hadn’t breathed her name out loud. It was like meeting Barbra all over again, saying her name.

“What was she like?”

Deacon’s breath caught and he laughed, breathy and short. What was she like? Like sunshine and clean water. Like a dream. Never should have happened to someone like him.

“She… _god_. She was something.” His eyes sank closed and he let himself remember. Sandy brown hair. Always a mess. Barefoot as much as she could manage. Never a bad thing to say about anyone. Her laugh… “She had… eyes the color of the sky. A smile you’d see on the cover of those old world magazines.” He smiled a little himself, a dim contrast, thinking about how he would do the silliest things to make her laugh.

 _God,_ he missed her. It hurt him, where the old aches always did, down in his gut like a sour rot. It wasn’t a new loss, just one that slowly ate away at him while he was busy looking the other way. Pretending to be one of the good guys.

“She sounds special,” said Fixer. Deacon chanced a glance at her and she smiled at him a little. She was leading him, easing the way, and part of him was grateful that she knew these steps. Maybe she’d been taking them herself, recently. With Nate.

He nodded slowly. “She saw something in me I didn’t even know existed. That I don’t think _ever_ existed. She made a mistake, picking me. Because I failed her as utterly as someone could fail someone they loved.”

“What happened?” An edge of interest. Brows drawing drown.

“We settled up near Salem. I was a farmer, if you can believe it.”  
  
“I almost can,” she said, watching him intently. She was smiling a little. She shouldn’t be smiling a little.

His ears grew hot and he rushed on. “I liked building things. Growing stuff. Built our house. Had an orchard. Barbara was good with gadgets, always inventing things. She was amazing. Helped automate some things around the settlement, build irrigation systems. A tech wizard really. We were trying for kids.” He smiled ruefully. “You know… with some help. Really… really wanted kids. And then… well. Someone accused Barbara of being a synth.”

Fixer went still at those words, and any hope that maybe there would be something to salvage flickered and died. He glanced up to meet her serious, dark-eyed stare of hers, realizing that he’d hoped that maybe she wouldn't hate him at the end of this. That she would still be able to meet his eyes. He broke their stare, fixing his attention on an interesting crack in the plaster instead _._

“Rumors were running rampant about synth replacements, the evils of the Institute. The height of synth hysteria. And Salem really blew up with it. They ran trials out of the Museum of Witchcraft. The historical irony was lost on me, at the time. I’ve… read a lot since then. But. Anyone who was a little different... And Barbara. She was different. Easy target. Never really good at… taking care of herself. Lost track of time a lot. Lost in thought. Eccentric. She was just…” He lost his words. How could he sum up Barbara?

“Brilliant?” Fixer supplied.

Deacon looked up. “Yeah. I think you’re getting the idea.” _Brilliant._ And then, snuffed out. “One night they came. Torches. Screaming at us. They… clapped us in irons, said she was a synth and said I probably was one too, if I didn’t notice that my wife was a replacement. They let me try and prove that she was human. It was all… _bullshit_.” The words ripped from him.

“Rigged from the start. They asked her pointless questions, ran these psychological _tests,_ and the whole time I just fucking _watched._ Hoping she’d pass. Trying to encourage her to be _normal._ ” His words gained momentum, carrying him along. “And she didn’t… because of _course_ she didn’t. Rigged. Completely arbitrary, who ‘passed’. And I was too fucking afraid that they’d accuse _me_ of being a synth, too afraid that _she_ might actually be a synth to say a goddamn thing. That she wasn’t _real._ That the real Barbara had been _replaced._ And I didn’t want a replacement Barbara. And by the time I’d made up my fucking mind that it didn’t _matter_ they were hauling her up in front of the entire fucking settlement and putting a noose around her neck. And they hanged her. And I watched. And then they buried her in the graveyard behind the Museum of Witchcraft. And I watched.”

He stopped. Fixer shifted, but he couldn’t look at her. A long silence stretched between them, and the rain outside reasserted itself, heavier now. Now that it was out, he felt a sick urge to justify himself. It was twenty-odd years ago, but his count. People had been terrified. He thought his wife had been replaced. He wasn’t… no one knew what synths were… Mass hysteria. He could... didn’t want Fixer to see him as a monster.

But he was, so instead of trying to justify himself, he kept his eyes glued to at the crack in the wall, the shape endlessly fascinating. A miniature topography, jagging its way senselessly through plaster.

And then she asked, quietly. “And then what happened?”

Deacon blinked at the question, unsure how to answer. There was _nothing_ after Barbara. Sometimes literally. Hollow vengeance. Blood. Wandering. Big blank spots in his memory.

“And then? I killed them. I killed each and every person who had touched her, tried to prove she was a synth, those who hanged her, and I would have killed anyone else who got in my way. With a fucking swatter and a shotgun, I killed them. And then I dug up her body and I buried her in the orchard. There would have been a way to find out if she was. If she was a synth, but. I didn’t have the guts. I could have looked inside her head, but—I still don’t know.

“And then? I tried to kill myself. I drank. And I pumped myself so full of chems I thought I _had_ died for a while. It almost worked. I don’t remember. I don’t know when Barb died. Never looked into it, or tried to find out. My first memories after burying her put me in the Capital Wasteland in the spring of 2265, riding out the DTs in some shack I’d been locked away in cuz someone wanted me to sober up. After that, I started looking for synths. Just to see if I could tell. And you know? There’s no trick. You _can’t._ Not while they’re alive. _You_ could be a synth. I could be one. Any of us. And that’s when I realized. It doesn’t _fucking_ matter. When I finally realized, the fear of synths made even less sense than before.

“Eventually, the Railroad found me. Or I found them. Can’t quite remember. And you know the rest. What matters of it.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Deacon stared hard at the wall, trying to memorize the jagged crags in the plaster when he felt her shift. He looked up to meet her eyes, expecting anger. Her eyes were shadowed, her mouth tight.

“I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t anger flitting across her face, like he expected. She shifted, and the warm shock of her hand made him shiver as she placed it over his. He tensed for a moment, and she curled her fingers around his palm. Slid over so their arms pressed together and she pulled his hand into her lap, resting on her thighs.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was solemn. “For telling me.”

It felt so final. He told her. She knew. And she could walk away. And so could he, with as clean a conscience as he’d had in over twenty years. Confession was that easy.

Time passed. He could only sit there and soak in the warmth of her, settling into acceptance that this was the last time he’d be this close. Might as well be bold. He turned his hand over, curling his fingers so he could run his thumb over her’s, back and forth. Her skin was chapped, work-torn and calloused. His were too.

She sighed and tipped her head to rest on his shoulder with a little sigh.

“Stay for dinner?” she asked, voice quiet and dreamy. “I have cheese.”

“Oof,” he said around the rock-hard lump in his throat. “Fixer, bringing out the bribes. Usually cheesy is my job.”

She rolled her eyes and squeezed his hand and let go, and he let it fall to the mattress, pressing it there to hide his shaking. She watched him for a moment, eyes big and brown and _wise._ Her face was serene, and he _hated her_ for looking so knowing, so... unloathing. He wanted to hug her.

“I’m not really the hugging type,” he said. “So uh. Good talk.”

A little half smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she stood. “ _Ouis, bon jas.”_

~~~

“I don’t know why poutine didn’t survive the apocalypse,” Deacon said, chasing a limp, gravy soaked tato around his plate. “It’s really the perfect food. Starch, gravy, cheese. It’s basically sin on a plate.”

Jeanne took a final bite. “It’s because Americans don’t know how to make it. They think it’s about the fries, but they don’t matter. It’s all in the gravy, and the squeaky cheese. I’ll find it one day. I like to imagine there are still _Quebecois_ up north making curds out of rad moose milk and frying their food in barrels of yaoi goi fat. Maybe I’ll go find out one day.”

Deacon grinned, imagining Fixer laying siege to the north, wielding her old world knowledge like a super sledge.  

They cleaned up the Rocket together after dinner, the routine of setting a secure camp with Fixer familiar and also somehow new and awkward. He had no idea what she was thinking. Why she asked him to stay. Why she was silent after his story. Fix was taciturn at the best of times, unless she was angry, but this silence was awkward, tentative.

“Can we talk things over?” she asked. They stood in the garage, the Rocket clean, feeling almost cozy and lived in. Deacon could feel that she’d _claimed_ this place.

Deacon lost his balance for a moment, almost lurching. She meant _them_. He already felt-wrung out from his earlier confession and the shock of nothing really changing. This would be it, then. She was about to kick him to the curb—

“I want to run through everything we’ve learned about the Institute.”

_Ah._

“Yeah,” he said. Work. “What’s on your mind?”

She took a deep breath. “Let me think out loud?”

Deacon nodded.

“They took Shaun ten years ago. Left me. Why? And there’s _Project Wanderer._ Whatever that may be. Virgil wanted to stop it. But he failed.” She frowned again. “He wrote something in his last journal.” Her eyes sank closed and she faltered, speaking in a foreign tongue he’d heard spoken in the Mojave, by the Legion. He’d picked up a bit from them, understood parts of it.

“ _Quaeque ipsa...miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui,”_ she said. “Do you know what that means?

Deacon frowned. “Latin… Saw miserable… terrible… and _quorum_ is… a group. Agreement. A great part.” He took a shaky breath. “I saw terrible things. Agreed in a great part. Or something like that.”

Their eyes met for a long moment and he felt like she could see right through his sunglasses.

“So he was guilt ridden. Wanted to stop Project Wanderer. I’ll find out what it is. The Courser said it was about choice. Whatever Virgil was doing, he _wanted_ to go back to the Institute. For a cure. He was also protecting someone. Maybe an ally.”

Deacon nodded, the latin words still echoing in his head. _Terrible things, which he played a great part…_

“And that’s all we have,” she said.

Deacon nodded. It wasn’t much. “It’s more than we had before you stormed the Commonwealth.”

Her laugh was rueful as she shifted from where she leaned against the red workbench. “I never thanked you,” she said.

“For what? You don’t need to thank me for anything?”

She pushed off the workbench and smiled. A soft, sweet smile that melted him a little. She shouldn’t be smiling at him like that. Not after everything…

“You made it easy. By being nice to me. Making me… feel like I wasn’t so alone. Gave me a space to lean how to survive here. Get functional. And you never pitied me. Always believe in me.”

“Fix. How could I not? You’re a crazy-scary badass. I’m still waiting for you to. You know. Kick me to the curb.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Your stuck with me. You did this to yourself, yeah? I’m kind of relying on you, here.”

“Fix…” He locked his arms around his waist. Clenched his hands. She’d just... _held his hand._ That was it. “I do _not_ deserve you being okay with this.”

“It’s not… _maudit_ . It’s not my place to be okay with what happened to you, what you did or didn’t do. Whatever person you see when you look at yourself, Deacon. That’s not who I see. Even now. I _promise_ you.” She paused. “Stay the night?”   

He gaped at her and she shook her head, eyes going wide as she backpedaled.

“Not like that, I don’t mean… I mean we could just… sit around. Play cards. We could see if anyone’s around in Sanctuary, Glory and Preston maybe. You can sleep wherever you want. Or leave. Once...”

“I won’t leave,” he said. Took a step forward.

“Okay,” she said. “Good.” And she reached out her hand. A funny look passed over her features, one he might dare call relief, and then his hand wrapped around hers and he pulled her into a hug with more force than he meant to. She made a squeak of surprise as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Not the hugging type, my ass,” she said into his chest. He felt the warmth of her breath through his shirt as she pressed her nose into the hollow of his throat.

He leaned away, holding her by the shoulders. They stared at each other for a moment, and he searched her eyes, and found only warmth. A spirit of foolishness possessed him and he kissed her. Properly this time, long and sweet, like she deserved. And she opened up to him, lips so full and soft he could be happy simply kissing her for the rest of his life.

And he knew now why he had to tell her. Because he didn’t deserve her. And she was _supposed_ to put an end to whatever was happening between them. Because he couldn’t. That was the _plan._ She was so noble, proud, that she was supposed to loathe him for what he was. But she didn’t loathe him, and she apparently wanted to kiss him, and who was he to deny her anything?

His fingers found his way to her hair, brushing strands back from her temples, tracing her ear so she shivered and he smiled into his kiss. Her hands trailed down his back, fisting at his hips, pulling him closer so he felt the shape of her against him, softer than she had any right to be. He kissed her lower lip, feeling the dart of her tongue. Made him wonder about her tongue in other places, though it might never feel right for his body to want her so badly when he could barely get his brain used to the idea.

“Thank god,” she whispered, dropping kisses along his jaw, making him whine. “I knew kissing you feeling this good couldn’t have been just because of the drinking, at the Rexford.”

The words jolted through him like he’d touched a live wire. He remembered the night at the Rexford perfectly. She’d been as needy and soft as she was now.

And an utter _brat_ . _Lying_ to him.

“You remember, don’t you?” He didn’t like how breathless he sounded. Not one bit. But goosebumps rose on her neck when he asked the question against her skin, and he liked giving her goosebumps so he kissed the spot behind her jaw, trailing up to her ear. More goosebumps. Less breathing.

“I do,” she said, pulling him back into another kiss. Fuck, her mouth was soft—he took a deep breath.

“Why did you lie?” He got his voice under control, even if his body was burning at every point they touched. His hands moved up, molding around her curves, up her waist, just shy of her breasts, eyeing the zipper of her jumpsuit.

She huffed at his question and nipped at his neck in admonishment, and his vision went funny for a moment. Breath control gone as quickly as he’d regained it.

“Why _didn’t_ you?” There was no accusation in her voice, but his stomach lurched. How they always managed to turn tables on each other, he'd never know.

He had no answer. He had a million answers. _I wanted to test you. I didn’t want to embarrass you. Or myself. It was easier than having to talk about it. I took advantage of you. You’re grieving. I’m grieving. Nate. Barbra. Work. The end of the world. I didn’t want you to know I listened to you get off to your dead husband._

Fuck. His face went all hot and prickly and he gaped at her. “Well, I… uh—” he started, brain scrambling for something to say that wouldn’t make him sound like some gibbering lovelorn sadsack.

She pulled away, her face lighting up with a delighted grin. “Oh, my god. You’re speechless.”

“I am _not_. I’m just—” he swallowed.

Her eyes sank closed and she tilted her head back and she laughed, gleeful.

“What are you doing?” he asked, feeling slightly baffled and affronted.

“I need to commit this moment to memory. Speechless Deacon,” she said with a pleased little sigh, stealing a peek at him through lowered lashes. “Oh my god. You’re blushing.”

“Shut up, Fix,” he said, and he felt the heat spread down his neck.

She opened her eyes and beamed at him, one of those rare, show-stopping smiles. “Make me.”

And he did. He bent forward and kissed her hard, hands going to her shoulders, sliding down her chest to tug at the zipper of her jumpsuit. He kissed down her neck. “I should find something to gag you with…”

“Oh?”

He ran his tongue along her collarbone, followed by little nips that made her go pink and shivery. “Mmmm,” he murmured. “Probably something useful under this jumpsuit…” He slid his fingers down the soft, warm curve of her stomach, teasing lower and she moaned. Her hands went tight on his hips, jerking him closer.

“Ah... _crisse,_ if someone had told me four months ago... before the vault… that I’d be having sex in the ruins of the Red Rocket down the street…”

Deacon snorted into her neck. “The wonders of the apocalypse never cease. The places you can fuck these days… ruined bowling alleys, ruined skyscrapers, ruined hotels, ruined parks… the possibilities are endless. But if you find somewhere not ruined where we could get busy, you let me know.”

She snickered as she slid her hand under his shirt, trailing her fingers up the bare skin of his back, each touch spreading warmth, making him want her more and more naked.  

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve had sex in some weird places, but a bowling alley… I would like to—”

“Strike that off your list?”

That made her snort in exasperation and poked him hard in the side, hitting a ticklish spot. He jerked away, hissing, grabbing for her hands and then she was kissing him again. Smiling, pressing close enough that his glasses dug into the bridge of his nose. He pushed them up to his forehead and she pulled away, looked up at him.

“I see why you hide your eyes,” she said. “Hard to stay unremarkable with eyes like yours.”

And for the second time as many minutes, Deacon couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He choked on his smile. “You’re beautiful,” he blurted out. And _that_ made her smile. “You turn me into a fucking idiot, you know,” he said.

“It’s adorable,” she said. “But you weren’t an idiot the other night. Your dirty talk is—”she sighed— “the best.” She planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth, her hips against his, pressing the shape of his packer into his pelvis, along the edge of his thigh, and he knew she could feel it too, the thought just a little thrilling. “You kiss me like you’re drowning,” she continued. “At the Rexford, I couldn’t stop. I—”  The points of color in her cheek spread, face flushing. “I was drunk and sloppy and I wanted you so badly.” Her smile grew, eyes dropping from his. “I got off thinking about you walking in on me…”

Deacon froze, transported back to that moment, dark and murky, the Rexford walls so thin he could hear everything. Her little whimpers. Her moans. They’d been for him. Not Nate. Not that it would have changed anything. But whatever feeling he had towards Fixer, whatever attraction—bizarre that she could be attracted to him, really—whatever attraction she had for him, none of it was about Nate, and none of it was about Barbra, and he needed to feel that, zone in on her, obsess over her kisses, worship her body. Come clean...

“I heard  you.”  
  
Her eyes widened, a mix of surprise and embarrassment making her nose wrinkle, eyes squeezed shut. “ _Crisse de tabernack de osti_ . Deacon! You _heard_ me?”

“The walls are pretty thin, Fix. I had to take a moment to… uh... collect myself in the hallway, cuz… uh… yeah, and then I heard you going on and it was kinda hard… to walk away. Fuck, Fix. You do things to me. And then I heard someone else in your room and I was worried. And then I realized it was Nate and I assumed—”

Her eyes snapped open, staring at him wonderingly. “You _are_ an idiot—” and then her arms flew around his neck, jerking him down into another kiss, and another, her tongue growing bolder.

“Fuck… Fix… Bed…” His eyes closes as his vision filled with stars, like he’d been struck, and he gasped. “Oh fuck, Fix.” They tugged at each others clothes as she lead him down the hall.

They tumbled down in tangle of limbs. Her hands massaged his hips and he grabbed one of them, slid her hand down to press against his packer. She made a pleased little noise and pressed harder, tracing the outline with her fingers so it pressed up into his core.

“Aw, fuck…” he whispered. He pawed at her breasts and she arched into him, her hand rubbing harder, her fingers spreading, seeking further.

“Ah, b-baby,” he stammered as her fingers got clever, tracking his packer down, pressing up into his core. Her whimper surprised him as much as her boldness.

He kissed down her neck to the v of her cleavage, pulling her jumpsuit open. “You’re so fucking soft.” Deacon ran his fingers down her chest and filled his hands with her breasts. She wore a plain bra, one built for support and not for show, but the fabric was thin enough he could see her nipples peaking. He ran his thumbs across them, making her moan and arch under his hands.

“Dee,” she whispered, and he liked how she shortened his name, how he could hear her accent bleeding through her whine.

“Yeah baby?” He was kissing down her neck now, and grazed his teeth over a nipple, worked his hand under her bra and massaged her impossibly soft skin.

She made a happy little noise, and tugged at the waistband of his jeans. “Can these come off now?” she asked.

He was too old to be nervous about getting naked with a pretty woman, but still a sliver of anxiety slid under his skin anyway as he pressed her hand back between his legs while he kneaded her breast. The other already helping her fumble at the button on his jeans.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling himself start to lock up, the sliver of anxiety turning into a shard as he kicked off his jeans. Fixer dropped her eyes to his underwear. His heart thudded as their thighs brushed, skin on skin for the first time.

It wasn’t fair. He wanted to plant his mouth between her legs and lick an orgasm from her, but Fixer watched him, dark eyes hot and hooded, drinking him in, fingers tracing his stomach down to his hip bones.  His packer made a bulge, and he could see the slight protrusion of his dick from behind it. She reached out, glanced up and he nodded. Even though his heart was hammering like no one had touched him in years. Like this was his first time. Fixer made everything feel like the first time, and it scared the everloving fuck out of him.

She ran her hand up and down the length of his packer. Which one was he wearing? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think as he thrust his hips forward when her thumb brushed the tip of his dick through his underwear.

He moaned, one hand still full of her breasts. He slid his free hand down and started touching himself, chasing the ache spreading into his core as she pulled off his underwear, still drinking him in with those big, dark eyes. His packer fell free and she grinned. It was one cased in yellow fabric, dotted with tiny blue flowers. He almost wished it was the rocket ship patterned one he’d made out of a pair of old socks. At least they could have a laugh over that.

“Pretty,” she said as he set it aside. “I never would have guessed.”

Deacon grinned down at her, his breathing going ragged as he rubbed his dick. “I’m full of surprises,” he said. She rested her hand on his mound for a moment and then she drifted down. The first touch of her fingers on his dick send electric waves of need through him, sent him whimpering, falling forward so he could kiss her again. Always kissing her. His lips felt empty and useless unless he was kissing her.

“Like this,” he whispered. Her tongue slid into his mouth as he showed her fingers what to do. He dragged her down through his wetness to play with his swollen lips and then back up to stroke his dick, showing her how to work her fingers around his fat, swelling head. Her fingers were small, clever, and she followed his movements with almost technical precision. He felt her frown, bringing to bear the focus she brought to any task.

Her fingers matched his, growing faster as he got more slick and hard. “Your mouth,” he gasped. “Real pretty. I bet it would feel great on my dick.”

Her grin was wicked, and she shoved him over so he rolled onto his back. She followed, straddling him, her fingers finding a rhythm again as she slid her body down his, keeping eye contact, haunting him. Big, brown, full of heat, a spark of mischief. He let his fingers trail up her body as she moved down, feeling scars, soft skin, the shape of her curves and then he buried his hands in her hair.

“Look at me,” he said, his voice thick. Her eyes never left his as her tongue darted out to taste him. Her eyelids flickered and his hips bucked, his hand fisting in her hair, and she enveloped him with warmth and wet of her mouth and sucked, tentative even as he pressed into her.

Wet, soft heat, the feel of her lips at his base, her cheeks and her tongue against his dick, sucking gently. Sliding back and forth. Soft, clever tongue, learning the shape of him while he pulled her deeper, thrusting his hips in time to her strokes. Her eyes fluttered again and the hum she made against him his back arch, fingers going tighter in her hair.

“All over,” he managed to gasp, breaking eye contact as his head fell back, eyes sinking closed as her tongue slid down to his cunt, sucking his swollen labia, making the ache deep in his core spread to meet her mouth.

It was going to be a fast fuck—the fastest of his life if he didn’t slow it down. And he needed to… too much, too fast, his rush towards release making him feel like he’d wound up with his curling toes hanging over a very high ledge with the ground very far below him, spinning faster the closer he got to falling.

He heard himself say stop and Fixer did, pushed herself up on her elbows, face shadowed with concern.

“Dee? Are you—” She wiped at her mouth, shiny with spit and the arousal from his cunt— “are you okay?”

He nods, blinking. “Yeah. Yeah I’m just… not ready.” Not ready for her to have so much…. _power_ over him. Make it so easy for him to unravel. “Not ready to come. And you’re making it really—” he took a shaky breath— “fucking difficult.”

She looked at him wonderingly, the worry easing. Incredible. She didn’t see through his bullshit. For once. He ran his hands through her hair, his dick still aching, screaming at his brain, but he wasn’t about to let his body get the better of him. Not ever.

He tugged at her and she smiled, crawled up his body, her skin whispering over his. He pulled her closer, huffing as they rearranged themselves. He rolled on his side, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“Naw.” He shook his head, glancing from her lips to her eyes and back, not sure where to look. “This is gonna take a bit of… adjustment. It's been awhile since sex felt like much more than filing paperwork in triplicate and then taking a quick jog around the block.

Her eyes sparked with something—surprise or understanding, and she nodded slowly.

He smiled, trying to look reassuring and probably failing as he felt it waver. “Should probably just be jogging right now instead of sprinting. Gotta get in shape. Maybe I can just hump your leg while we feel each other up for a bit?”

That earned him a snicker that shot right to his core, wondering at the sound of her, her goddamn smile. Thank god she didn’t seem to need sexy pillow talk or sweet words. Being crass was easier. Laughter was easier.

“Sure,” she said. She leaned in and kissed his neck. “We can jog. And do paperwork. Whatever you want. What do you want?”

“I think we can try things a little bit more interesting than paperwork…” He traied off, trying to think of an honest answer that wasn’t packed with too much feeling. Stick with dirty. They both seemed to like dirty. “I want to fuck you. Make you come,” he whispered. “Maybe torture you a little.”

She took a ragged breath and nodded, whispered a yes, whispered please, and he offered her little reassurances that he'd like nothing more, that he could jog and she could sprint if that’s what she wanted, they had their own speeds and this was about her, how she felt in his hands as they slipped down to explore her body, with all its dips and curves, soft spots and hard muscle. A study in contrasts he kind of really wanted to get an advanced degree in.

Her knee slipped between his legs and he drew it up so he could press himself against her thigh, their bodies moving against each other in that slow, directionless way. Simply feeling the brush of skin on skin, figuring out the angles of their limbs. Better. Not so close to the ledge now. He still ached, hard and swollen but not about to lose his goddamn mind.

She gazed at him, looked at him the way no one had looked at him in decades and he thought, _then again, might lose my mind yet._ He kissed her gently, drinking in the salty taste of himself on her lips, contrasting with the sweetness of her her tongue, sliding slowly against his.

“What makes you feel good?” he asked as he gathered her breasts in his hands, peaked her nipples between his thumbs so she squirmed against him, gasping.

“That,” she murmured, “Feels good.”  

“Yeah?” His hand headed further south to rub against the outside of her cunt, coarse curls cropped and neat. “What about this?”

She nodded against his lips, half kissing him, half panting. He ran his fingers over the outside of her slit, humming with delight when he found her already wet. He ground down on her leg, found a bit of friction for himself. Her hips bukced up against him and his fingers slid into her, plump lips giving way to a slick heat. She whimpered again, her hips thrusting up into his hand as he brushed her clit, small and soft and hot.

“Ah… _crisse_ ,” she murmured, kissing him, open-mouthed and panting. “Feels good.”

He found a rhythm and stroked her clit, rubbing broad strokes, getting tighter until she was arcing under his fingers. He rubbed down on her thigh, rocking his hips so they ground against each other slowly, his fingers working up to a steady pace in little increments of pressure and release.

“Ah, you’re so good,” he whispered. “You feel so good. So fucking _soft_ , how is that possible?”

For a moment Deacon wished he could shut the hell up instead of babbling at her, but she moaned. Seemed to like his chatter, half whispered, half groaned against her lips and her neck. She liked it when he talked. Pulled her hair. Made her beg…

Now _that_ was an idea. His hand abandoned her breasts, slid up her chest, tracing her collarbones, cradled her neck and he gripped her hair, kissed her ear. Twisted his body so their legs intertwined, grinding down on her thigh so hard he moaned as a deep heat bloomed in his stomach again.

“How do you feel about manners?” he asked, letting his lips brush her ear. She twisted under him, rocking her body in time with his stokes, each twist of her hips rubbing her thigh up against the flush of his little cock so the heat in his stomach grew outward and downwards, making his thighs ache as they rode each other.

“W-what?” She said. He switched up the rhythm, flicking her clit so she gasped, and then went back to his slow, tight circles.

“You know, being polite. I hear that was the running joke about Canadians. Very polite people.”

“Oh, fuck y-you—” Deacon pulsed down on the her clit, making her arch and stammer.

“Mmm. I _do_ think you could use some lessons.” He grinned at her, meeting the glint of a challenge in her eyes that sent a thrill through his core as strong as anything her lips and tongue had done to him. His fingers sped up and her eyes fluttered closed, squirming against his hand.

“Ah, Dee… you’re taking me places. You want to fuck me? Like the other night.”  
  
“Yeah... That’s a really good idea. But uh…” He smiled, feeling wicked, and perverted, and entirely fucking unworthy… “Say please.”

“Wh—”

“ _‘Please_.’”

He slid his fingers down her slit, exploring her lips and the opening of her cunt while his thumb continued the mission on her clit.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Fuck me, please.”

“Good,” he whispered. “But you’ve gotta ask permission. Before you come.” He slid his index and middle fingers inside of her slowly, working them deeper with little thrusts. “Is that alright?”

She nodded, her eyes heavy and unfocused, lips parted. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I can… ahh. Play along.” Her voice was thready, and he could feel her growing unfocused, giving herself over to being fucked, coming unraveled in his hands. He brushed a fall of hair from her eyes, stroked her hair back, letting it play through his fingers.

She was _so_ good. She should know— “Good girl,” he whispered and at the words she moaned. A shiver ran through her, her cunt going tight around his fingers.

“Ahh,” he managed to say, his dick throbbing as she rocked under him. “Good… aw fuck, sweetheart. You know how good you are?”

She whimpered again. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For complements.”

“Now _that’s_ polite.”

His dick ached as he frotted against her thigh and they made shameless noises; the wet sounds of his hands working inside her, her moans, his painting, the creak of the bed as they rocked it.  She whimpered and he fucked her hard, working his fingers deeper, finding a slow, heavy rhythm, and she threw herself against him. He felt the intensity creeping back up, the ledge getting closer, but the feeling of her wet heat around his fingers was all he needed to focus on to keep it at bay.

“Dee… ah, fuck,” she said. He pressed his nose to hers, kissed her hard, swallowing his name as she breathed it again, and slid another finger into her, careful. Remembering last time, that she was tight and sensitive, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Last thing he ever wanted.

“Ahh, I’m gonna come— _crisse!”_

“You know what to say,” he said, teasing her tongue with his, making her chase his mouth.

“Please?” she said, and it hit him in the gut, how desperate she sounded.

He kisses her sweetly, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth, pretending to think on his answer. “No,” he said, slowing his fingers, easing up a little so she groaned in frustration, her back arching.

“ _Fuck_ ! Ahh… Deacon, _tabarnak!_ ”

“ Now _that_ sounded _incredibly_ rude.”

“ _You’re_ in-ah! Incredibly r-rude,” she groaned. “Please? You’re gonna… ah _crisse_ …” She was shaking all over now, her breasts bouncing in the most fascinating way as she groped herself, pinching one of her fat, hard nippes. Gasping, desperate, close to panic, like she _actually_ didn’t want to climax without his permission _._ And that was another shock—that she was taking the game so seriously. 

“Try asking one more time,” he said against her ear, watching her run her hands over her chest.

“P-please,” she sighed. “Please can I come? Deacon, please...”

The way she asked, the way she said his name knocked the breath out of him. Something in him ached to deny her, to actually _be_ the kinky bastard who’d play games to satisfy his own weird cravings, his need to put on an act in order to keep the truth a million miles away. But he wasn’t going to. Besides, he wasn’t setting her up for _failure,_ here _._ Who knew how much longer she could hold out.

“Okay. Yeah. You can—you can come.”

He curled his fingers against the sensitive spot inside her and rocked against her clit with the back of his thumb, and she came, hissing, grinding down into his hand as her climax fluttered around his curling fingers. He pushed her harder, coaxing more.

Her back arched, her pelvis bucking against his stomach. _“Tabarnak de chalais de_ … nngggg— _Fucking osti!_ ” she managed to stutter out out between her cries.

He ground down hard on her thigh and felt something warm race up his spine and bloom out into his stomach, making his dick pulse and cunt clench against her thigh so he moaned. It wasn’t an orgasam—not quite, but it was something… gratifying. If he worked a little more, pushed his dick a little harder against her thigh he could properly get off just hearing her scream in French while his his fingers worked deep inside of her.

And then she fell still, whimpering through the aftershocks. Her skin was flush and damp, covered in pinpricks. Deacon withdrew his slick fingers slowy as she shuddered, her scent filling his senses, sweet and tangy. He dared a taste, sucking a forefinger as she opened her eyes, blinking sleepily at him. Her chin tilted up and she grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand to suck on his fingers one by one.

_Oh, fuck._

“Haha,” he laughed, choking on whatever he was going to say as her tongue slid up his fingers. “That’s… _nng_...very good. Good… Fix....”  

She let his fingers pop from her mouth and he traced her mouth. Her amazing mouth. She half sat up to kiss him while his fingers traced the edge of her lips. Her fucking lips. The pout of them, soft, consuming.

“I have a question,” a little later. She trailed her fingers up  and down his waist, back and forth.

“Yeah?” He cleared his throat. “What is it?”

“Did you... did you touch yourself after I left?” she asked. Her hips moved a bit against him, as if the thought might be turning her on. “I’m really sorry. I should have told Cait and RJ to fuck off.”

Deacon’s smile flickered as the ache started up again, his body reminding him he hadn’t gotten off, edging closer and closer, but not stepping over the ledge. His hips shifted and he pulled her closer, felt the warmth of her center against his hip. With a bit of acrobatics they could probably rub up against each other pretty effectively.

“Mmm,” he said, swallowing hard. “Yeah. I handled the situation. Heh. Handled.”

She grinned up at him. “Do you want me to take off so you can have some privacy?” she asked.

“You? Go anywhere? I don’t think so, Fix.” The thought of her running off again sent his stomach sinking, made him feel lonely and needy. Lonely he knew all about. But needy? Clingy? That was new. He licked his lips, thinking. “You know I can’t resist an audience,” he said after a moment.

Fixer’s face brightened with a slow smile. “Yeah? I haven’t seen a show in a while.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a...short...small one.”

“Would you like any help? I could… I don’t know—”

“Uh, watch with rapt attention and applaud at the end.”

Her smile grew bigger. “I can do that.”

He shifted away and picked up one of her hands in his, placed it on his chest, dragged her fingers over one nipple as his other hand returned to the heat between his legs. He was a mess, wet and dripping and swollen, his dick already stiff, and he pulled his cunt back from around the hard, thick nub. Slick with her spit and his lubrication, he started touching himself as she leaned back to watch.

He dared a glance at her face and traced her half smile with his fingers, turning it into a grin. He slid his fingers into her mouth, running his thumb over her tongue. She sucked on his fingers, and it wasn't a far stretch to imagine it was her mouth on his dick again, instead of his fingers. The thought pushed him back towards the ledge, with the added safety net that he was the one who'd decide when he'd fall. Probably.

Maybe.

“You're very talented,” she said. Her voice was low and hoarse, and she kept watching him, pink tongue darting out to lick her lips as his hands trailed down to touch her breasts again. Endlessly lovely.

“Yeah? How so?” He said.

She thought for a moment, eyes traveling down his body to watch his hand move back and forth just above their intertwined legs. “You've got good stage presence.”

“Oh?” He grunted a little as his fingers found a good spot, chasing it.  

“Mm.” She leaned in a little and kissed him. Her stomach pressed against his hand and he groaned as he tasted himself on her mouth, pushing him another little step towards the edge. “Clever,” she continued. “Committed to your role. A wonderful liar. _Very_ convincing.”

He huffed as she kissed his neck, her teeth scraping towards his throat. “Aah, Fix…” his voice broke as she sucked and then bit him. “Harder,” he whispered. The next bite made him cry out, and her nails scraped his shoulder, raking down his arm.

“I should mention you’re also incredibly good looking.”

“Fix…” he said. Not sure if he was warning her to lay off the compliments for real or if he was getting closer. Her name was getting closer to the only thing he could say.

She made a happy little sound, kissing the hollow of his throat, running her mouth along his collarbone.

“Fixer…” He breathed out her name against her ear as his fingers wandered over his cunt and back up, rubbing harder, sliding to the root of his cock and back out, hard even deep in his apex. His fingers moved faster now, the stimulation approaching overwhelming.

“What is it?” Her voice was muffled by his skin.

He moaned in reply. The edge loomed and his hips bucked and he felt hot and needy and dizzy. Wanted her all over him, clinging, begging him for...something.

He dipped his head to kiss her, sloppy and hard and the feeling of her wet, soft mouth sliding over his pushed him over. His core spilled bright heat racing up his spine and down his thighs, and his cock throbbed, and through it all it was her mouth that kept him there, moving against his, their tongues sliding hard over each other with a scrape of teeth against lips.

“Jeanne,” he groaned, “baby… ah, Jeannie…” Deacon whispered her name, what he’d never called her, until he fell quiet save for gentle panting, feeling the sweat prickle on his back and arms, across his chest while he rested his forehead against hers. For a while they laid there. Breathing. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to look at her, not wanting to see how she was looking at _him_. Her hand traced up and down his back and the sensation felt nice. Something to focus on.

“Good show,” she said after a while. She shifted and Deacon forced himself to open his eyes.

Her expression was soft as he’d ever seen. No little frown between her brows.

“Yeah? Prepare yourself, because that was just the trailer.” His voice still shook a little.

She blinked slowly at him and gave him a sleepy smile, and he smiled back. And then she laughed. More of a giggle, really, which he’d never get used to. Fixer, _giggling_. Her eyes squeezed shut, nose wrinkling, shoulders shaking.

“I’ll get tickets,” she said.

“Front row seats,” he said, and kissed her again. Softer, sated. The warm press of her lips, her body against his. The warm trailing of her fingers back and forth across his shoulders. They burrowed into the bed then, covering up with a blanket, neither speaking, because what could either of them possibly say?

Bye? Have a nice life?

There was a quiet desperation in the way she pressed herself into him, snaking an arm around his waist, cheek resting against his chest. Legs still intertwined, fingers absently exploring each other’s bodies. Nicks and scars, the soft skin of her waist. Her fingers brushed along his arm and lingerd when she brushed along the quarter-inch long hormone implant that gave him such a manly exterior.

“What’s this?” she asked, her voice sleepy.

“Gives me my man-powers,” he said.

She snorted a laugh. “Subdermal implant. These weren’t very common before the war.”

“Ooo. Doctor talk. I like it.”

She gave him an annoyed little nudge.

He hesitated a moment. Wondered if her interest was simply a doctor’s curiosity, or if it came from her interest in him. “I get ‘em from the doc in Diamond City. Something about mutant yams and monster soybeans and plastic, imported from the midland Commonwealths. There’s proper farms out there. I don’t really bother to get the details. It’s what most folks around here who want hormones use. I replace it once a year or so, if I feel like it. Lately I usually do.”

Her fingers traced the little bump one more time and then she moved on, slipping her arm back around his waist with a little sigh.

“I like your man-powers,” she said.

“Yeah? Which ones?”

She leaned back, smiled at him and ran a thumb over his cheek. “Your scruff,” she said. “Your voice. Your… uh…” She faltered. “I don’t really know what man-powers are.”

He felt like a teenager, all unsteady and overzealous, shy and eager at once and totally, completely idiotic.  He leaned in and kissed her through his smile. “Me neither,” he admitted. “It just sounded cool.”

They fell quiet again, and Deacon let himself sink into the feeling of being twined around another person for no reason other than it felt good. Approaching safe.

If he was giving honesty a shot today, he might as well come clean to both of them. She’d probably be mad, call him selfish, remind him that she had to get her son, and he had to remind himself that _this was it_. The thing he’d been working blindly towards for the past two decades. But…

“I don’t want you to go,” he said. The ache in his chest when he said it felt like his lung was collapsing again.

“I don’t want to go either,” she said. The little furrow between her brows came back as they knit together, and Deacon reached up and ran his fingers along her forehead, trying to soothe away her frown.

“You’re gonna be fine,” he said. “Perfectly fine. And you’ll come back and keep kicking ass. And if you want—I know you’ll be busy. Being a mom and all. But the Railroad could sure use you. We kinda need you. Been waiting for someone like you a long time. Cuz Dez has designs on you.”

“Dez?” She laughed. “The Railroad.” Her voice infused with skepticism. She saw right through him. Though the Railroad _did_ need her. And Dez did have grand schemes.

“Yep,” he said.

“I guess I could stay around. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Stuck here. And given the option, I don’t know if I’d go back.” She yawned as if she hadn’t just confessed that maybe she liked her new life, now that she’d had time to adjust. The yawn caught him as well, reminding him of his suppressed exhaustion. Emotional, mental, physical. Everything in him exhausted.

“Do you want to stay the night? Here? With me?” Her voice was soft. Unassuming of his answer.

“You still think I’m going somewhere, don’t you?”

She twisted her shoulders in a shrug, her skin warm and velvet-soft against his. “Just tonight, I mean. We can figure out the rest when I get back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh! Sorry it took a while, this chapter was...very long. Longer than I normally like. Much talking and sex and apparently that's what happens when you have like 60k of mutual pining with no resolution. Apologies for the awkward pacing here but I've been staring at the damn document for so long I had to let it go and get on with it.
> 
> Anyway! Here's some actual solid smut for these two. I think...they might like each other. A lot. Deacon's trans/nonbinary and demisexual stuff is based in some part on my own experiences, so please don't take any of this as some sort of universal reality for other nb/trans people who have sex. I was also unsure about them boinking so soon after Deacon's confession but again, pacing, long chapter, plot must move forward, etc. and it felt right enough.
> 
> Thank you so much if you've gotten this far in my monster fic... This story means so much to me and I love writing it. More on the way really soon!


	24. Rabbit Underground

Fixer

 

"It's ready."

"Stable as I can make it."

"Rip her apart."

"Put her back together."

She laid flat out on a table, arms pinned, the hum of machinery vibrating her chest. Comforting mechanisms, working as they should, except they would dissolve her. Open her up. Make her disappear completely.

She resigned herself, accepted the fear, submerged herself below it. Like submitting to life-saving surgery, because the possibility of living outweighed the certainty of dying. Regardless, no patient really knew what they might find on the other side of anesthesia. 

She cried out as the light enveloped her. Not a teleporter, but cryo. Cold burning so deep into her bones she might shatter at a feather touch. No longer on a table but in a coffin with a little window out into the vault. The ice hurt at the molecular level. In places she didn't know could experience pain. The infinite spaces  _ between  _ the fibers that made her, her.  

And then hands, warm, safe, reached for her, and she reached for them,  felt a thumb brush her cheek, sliding over tears. 

"Hey," he said. "Hey, it's okay. You're okay."

Semi-darkness. Warm, lean body against hers. Naked, wrapped in a tumble of blankets, a tangle of arms and legs, his hand cradling her cheek, the other rubbing her back. She shuddered out of the nightmare and Deacon pulled her closer. Kissed her temple without hesitation, like he'd done it a thousand times before. 

"If I die..."

"No." 

"When..."

"When you get back..."

"You..."

He tilted her chin up, looked directly in her eyes. It was a rare moment, his gaze steady and soft and she felt it burning into her memory. Big enough she'd have to forget other things to make room. Blue, not quite ice. Not quite ocean. Not quite anything. Just like him. 

"I've got a new call phrase for the Death Bunnies," he said. 

"Oh?" The word fell breathless through another shiver. He wrapped the blankets tighter around them but she'd never be warm enough, not after a dream like that. “‘Do you have a geiger counter’ is getting worn out’?”

“Nah. I just like to keep you on your toes. You ready? It’s an old rabbit proverb.”

“A rabbit proverb? What the hell is a rabbit proverb?”

“Remember this," he said, completely deadpan, though his eyes shone with mischief.

She nodded even as scepticism bled through the sleep-and-fear heavy haze clinging to her. 

" _ Rabbit underground, _ " he said. She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek. " _ Rabbit safe and sound _ . Got it?"

She smiled a little. Nodded again. "Rabbit underground," she whispered. 

"Rabbit safe and sound. From  _ Watership Down.  _ Good?"

All she could do was nod again. 

Then his lips claimed hers. A kiss. Soft and sweet to start out, but turned demanding. A moan floated free between them. 

She pulled away, frowning. Remembering how he’d struggled before, when she’d touched him. She didn’t understand but he wasn’t going to explain any more than he already had--anything else would be lies--and that was okay. He had no obligation to indulge her.

"You don't have to do this for me." 

A long pause. Then, "For you?" He laughed, almost a scoff. "You underestimate what a selfish bastard I am."

Another pause. This one shorter. She nodded and smiled a little, even though she didn’t understand him. And he smiled back, crooked in the dark. 

“I want to forget,” she said. “For just a little while.” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, sliding his hand down to pull her hips closer to his.

Their hands wandered, not soothing but possessive, first pulling at each other and then tearing. He rolled her over, pinned her down, employing wet mouth and sharp teeth and blunt nails. 

He slid inside of her one finger at a time. Still wet from a few hours ago. She struggled against him if only to feel restrained, to find some resistance, until her struggles became less about fighting back and more about chasing release, to fill all those empty spaces between the fibers that held her together, chase away the cold with a very specific type of heat. At least for a little while.

He peppered her with bites and little praises, full of worship and demands, promises they wouldn't remember later. She was already begging, asking for more, asking for harder, things she would  _ definitely _ remember later. He went through the motions without making them cheap, watching her every move, pulling the same tricks he's learned from the first few times, but with a new twist to each. A twist of his fingers inside of her. A swirl of his tongue hard against her nipple, a scrape of teeth. Bites hard enough to bruise all along the soft edges of her body, like he wanted to devour her. Leave little marks, so she’d remember him later. 

Nothing for him. He wouldn't let her. Pinned her wrists in one hand, while his other pumped, fucking her hard and fast so her back arched and she thought about going down on him again, how good he’d tasted, a heady mix of hard and soft. And then he slid a third finger inside of her and all thoughts of the future stopped. He punished her clit with his thumb while he held her down with a forearm pinned across her shoulders, his legs trapping hers as she bucked, teeth at his throat. Their thighs rubbed together, skin on skin and she felt the warm wet of his cunt slick on her belly as he ground down against her. She came in a shuddering, gasping arc of pleasure that shot through her core and up her legs, up to her chest. She shook beneath him as he pulled his fingers free, brushing her clit, massaging the outside of her cunt as she pressed into his hand. His eyes half lidded, huffing like touching her was getting close to getting him off.

"That's it, sweetheart," he soothed. A kiss. "That's it." Another. Trailed his sex-sticky hands up her body, finding dips and curves, exploring the soft, fat parts of her, not ignoring her belly or her hips like some lovers had in the past, kissing the tops of her breasts up to her neck.

“Sex isn't going to get rid of my nightmares,” she said through the quiver in her voice. 

Deacon chuckled. “But it's fun to try.” 

She studied his profile, the little half smile. Handsome. Blunt and sharp at the same time. Eyes lined with crow’s feet. Tired eyes. Old soul eyes. The youth he projected another lie. 

She hesitated for a moment. “Do you want anything? Can I do anything…?”

He turned those eyes on her, brows drawn down. Thinking a moment. Then he licked his lips. "You want me?" 

She nodded. Heart in her throat. " _ Ouis _ , I do. How can I?"

“Like this?” He sat up, slid up her body a bit. “Your mouth…”

“Yes,” she said, tugging him closer.

He crawled up her body until he straddled her shoulders. She strained up to meet him. Rich, musky scent, his sex hard and swollen and soft at the same time. He got harder as she sucked, licked him up and down, filled her mouth with him. His dick grew hot and thick as she laved him, until her face was slick and her jaw sore, his thighs trembling around her head as he came undone under her tongue. He whispered her name, the sweet things he called her-- _ baby, sweetheart, Tiger-- _ his arm braced on the wall, a hand fisted in her hair, pulling her up into his center as she hummed her own delight, clinging to his hips as he groaned through his orgasm, pulsing again and again in her mouth. 

He pulled away as suddenly as he'd climbed over top of her, and fell to sit on the edge of the bed, breathing hard, one hand wandering over her belly, the other cradling his head with an elbow on his knee.

His free hand found her arm, tethering them together and she sat up, crawling over to drape herself against his back. She dropped a kiss on the nape of his neck like she'd done it a thousand times before and he leaned back into her touch resting his head on her chest and she let the rabbit-fast beat of her heart thud into quiet. 

"You're lovely," he mumbled, grabbing her ass, squeezing. 

She laughed into the kiss she planted behind his ear, then one across the back of his head, rough with stubble. He needed to shave. The past few days without him…and now knowing where he’d come from. Why he’d been gone. Thinking. About her. About Barbara. All the reasons she might not want him around. Pressing against his back, tracing little patterns into his shoulders with lazy fingers, she felt a twist of guilt. Knowing what he’d done--hadn’t done--how he’d lost someone. No, not just  _ someone.  _ The love of his life… It changed how she saw him, made him clearer in her mind. The changes, the lying. How hard he worked, to help people, and to keep them away. And Jeanne-- _ Fixer-- _ had fucked that up for him. He wasn’t ephemeral any more, but real and solid and grounding under all that fog.

“You okay?” she asked.

He took a shaky breath. “Yeah,” he said. 

She couldn’t tell if he was lying.

~~~

He woke her in the morning with kisses along her neck, making happy, sleepy noises as he found her ear. 

She groaned, her face tired and muzzy with sleep even as she turned to capture his mouth. Kissed him long and slow, till his breath grew short and his hands wandered. 

Then she pulled away smiled up at him. “ _ Bon matin _ ,” she said. 

“Mornin’ Tiger,” he replied, voice a little hoarse. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Quite.” She hesitated a moment, watching him. WIthout his sunglasses he almost didn’t look like Deacon, enough that it took her aback, startling her to alertness. And then he smiled and he was the same Deacon as always, crooked teeth and laugh lines and an air of mischief. 

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.

Her eyebrows flew skyward as she remembered the dress she’d folded and put into the bottom drawer of the dresser just across the room. 

“A coincidence. Me too,” she admitted. 

His face lit into a full grin, and she caught a hint of eagerness in the blue of his eyes. His eyes were his tell. She’d figured it was, months ago. The sunglasses were a tool that buffered him from observation. A mirror between him and the world. Jeanne wished she had her own pair right about now, instead of floundering and transparent, adrift without her usual layers of self-possession.

“Mine requires some preparation. So you just hang out here. Relax. Go back to sleep if you want. I’ll be back. Ten minutes.” 

She nodded again and fell back against the pillows with a sigh, watching Deacon get dressed. They’d changed around each other dozens of times before, probably daily, but she’d never really  _ watched.  _ He had a nice butt. Narrow hips. Broad shoulders, lean, wiry arms. He was very, very pretty when naked.

He shot a grin over his shoulder when he caught her looking, wiggled his now denim-clad ass at her and then whisked around the corner. 

She stared at the ceiling, glad for a moment alone so she could gather herself. Her thoughts. Her body. All loose and floaty, tethered by threads but not all bound up and ordered like she liked to be. Time to reel herself back in.

Deacon. Killed his wife through his own inaction. Obsessively dedicated to writing whatever wrongs he’d done before he knew they were wrong. Or before he’d learned the consequences of being wrong. She wondered why he had told her. Some sort of absolution? Doubtful. By her guess he’d been working for the Railroad for at least fifteen years, morphing himself into whatever role he needed to play. She couldn’t believe that in all that time, he’d never sought some sort of forgiveness, or if he hadn’t, why he’d be looking for it now. 

Or he was possibly lying. Or bending the truth. She could wait. Find out. Or not. It didn’t really matter.

The thread was too tangled to parse. She set it aside, picked up another. Shaun.

She was going to see her baby. Take him away from the people who had killed his father. Though she’d already taken revenge. Kellogg. She hadn’t thought about him in months. It hardly felt like he’d been the one to pull the trigger. 

_ A good death. A better death. This one I got to see coming.  _

Kellogg’s words still puzzled her. He was a synth. Perhaps he’d died before. But he knew she was after him, even after ten years. He made it feel like it was all planned out.

She frowned. 

_ I don’t want you to go,  _ Deacon had whispered to her last night. A truth, it had to be. Too raw, too antithetical to everything she knew about him and his goals to be anything else.

Going into the Institute was a trap. That was certain. Or at least they would be expecting her. Weather or not it was a trap simply depended on their intent.

Deacon came back a little later, as she ran through what she knew for the third time. And then her thoughts derailed because a smell made its way to her nose. Something she hadn’t smelled in what felt like years. 210 years. 210 years and four months to be exact. 

“Deacon, I think I might be having a stroke. Is that…”

“Coffee,” he said. A grin stretched across his face and he marched to the bedside and offered her one of the cups. She sat up, gaping at him as she struggled to wrap a blanket around her naked chest. 

“ _ Crisse de tabarnak… _ Deacon, where the hell did you get coffee?”   
  
“Been saving it for a rainy day.”

She took the mug in careful fingers, inhaling the bright, burnt scent. “You’ve been holding on on  _ coffee _ ? You know I can never forgive you.”

He smiled and settled in beside her. “Take a sip, and then say you won’t forgive me.” 

She did, and the coffee was dark and bitter, near tongue curdling with how strong it was, especially after no coffee at all. “I’m…” she closed her eyes. “So mad at you.”

He chucked. “There’s a whole tin. And I promise, I found it like, two days ago.” 

She made a sceptical noise and took another sip. “You better keep that tin safe.” 

“My life belongs to the tin of coffee, until your return.” He made a little bow over his cup, and Fixer snorted. “So, what’s my present? Is it a baby molerat? I’ve always wanted a molerat. I’d name her Fluffy.” 

“ _ Non,  _ it’s not a baby molerat,” she said. She took one last sip before climbing out of bed, acutely aware that she was naked but determined not to be shy. What did she have to be shy about? It was just Deacon. Deacon, watching her every move. 

“Don’t stare,” she told him.

“I can get my sunglasses,” he said. “That way I can stare and we can both pretend I’m not.” 

“Do you want the present, or no?”

Deacon sighed and averted his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m okay with an adult molerat, too. They’re less train-able, but I’ll make it work.”

“ _ Non _ ,” she said, finding a t-shirt and some underwear, her ears burning.

Her body felt like sludge as she opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. No idea if he’d like it. If he’d care. If it was the wrong thing. Weirdly gendered. And she’d put so much effort into repairing the dress she wondered if  _ she’d  _ be disappointed if he didn’t like it. She pulled out the dress she’d tried to save. The stains weren’t totally gone, and the gray dye was more blue than not, but the careful beading was still intact and it was no longer ‘ruined.’ Cait had pronounced it ‘good enough’ when she saw the finished product. 

Jeanne hesitated for a moment, her heart finding its way to her throat and she swallowed hard. Turned around and shoved it at him before she could lose her nerve. 

Deacon looked down at the garment in her hands and took it slowly. He stared at it for a moment, and then dropped his hands, looked at her with a wide eyed expression. 

“Oh my god,” he said, and her eyes snapped to him. “I’ve been  _ looking  _ for this. You little thief.” 

Her mouth fell open and her flush returned with a vengeance. “I’m giving it back! I’m sorry! I was just…”

He shook his head, back and forth. “Fix…”

“ _ Crisse…  _ I thought...You seemed sad about the dress--”

“Fixer,” he said again, but she couldn’t stop the torrent of excuses. 

“--and you looked...nice in it and—”

He put the dress in his lap, patted the edge of the bed. “Will you sit?”

She nodded, taking a deep breath, and sat.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “Now I feel like coffee is inadequate.” 

“Hardly…” 

“I guess we could call this Christmas. And New Years.”

_ And my birthday _ , she added silently. She’d hardly marked its passage just a few days after the Marowski incident. She’d probably been at the Slog, if she’d gotten her days right. Thirty-three years old. Two-hundred and forty-three years old, chronologically. 

Now  _ that _ was depressing. 

Deacon was on his feet already, taking off his shirt and Jeanne traced the lean curve of his back, the definition of his shoulders, the shadow of his ribs and the double scars cutting under his arms and across his chest. “Now who’s staring?” he said as she did, blatantly stare. She cast around and found his sunglasses on the bedside table, slipped them on. 

“There,” she said. “I’ll pretend not to watch.” She tucked herself back against the wall and definitely watched. He held out his arms, twisting this way and that. 

“Eh?” he said. The blue-gray of the dress echoed in his eyes and she smiled, took a smug sip of coffee, the hot, bitter taste of the old world overstrong and intoxicating after months of wasteland imitations.

“Honestly,” she said, as he climbed on the bed, “I think this was more a present for myself.” She put her hand on his thigh, slid it up, felt the soft silk and beading rush against his skin and the tickle of the hair dusting his thigh, and he grinned. 

“Something to look forward to, maybe.” 

The words hung between them like a held breath, and then he shook his head and leaned in and kissed her and whispered thank you. 

_ “Merci _ ,” he said.

She grinned, pushing his sunglasses back up her nose, and slipped a hand under the hem of his dress. No underwear. She ran her hand over his ass and he shivered under her touch, mouth dropping open a little. 

“Nice shades,” he whispered.

She leaned up to kiss him, head spinning, brian hollering at her to focus on her impending trip to the Institute, her impending dissolution and reconstitution. But body made it impossible to do so. His hand slid up to cup one of her breasts, pinching a nippe over her shirt. Her stomach lurched and her hand grew bolder on his ass, sqeezing and seeking as she him closer, knew they were going to fuck again. Maybe they’d fuck until the relay was ready. Jeanne would be okay with that. Twenty-four hours in bed. Forty-eight hours… a week… 

Screw work. Screw...

“Hey! Fixer!” A voice sounded just outside the room. They both jumped. Deacon lept away from the bed, and straightened up just as Glory turned the corner. He twitched his dress around his hips. 

“Dez made me the fucking messenger, sent me to tell you the relay’s re--”

Jeanne sat up, acutely aware that she wore only underwear and a threadbare t-shirt with nothing underneath, her nippes hard, legs splayed. She gathered herself, reached for her coffee cup. 

Glory’s face went slack, brown eyes wide with surprise as she looked between Deacon and Jeanne. And then Jeanne remembered she was wearing Deacon’s glasses, and Deacon wore a cocktail dress, and there were rumpled clothes scattered around the room and it probably smelled like sex. Everything about the scene was compromising.

“Uh…” Glory said. 

“You’re just in time for dress rehearsal,” Deacon said, swaying a little. “Doing a skit or two to keep up morale.”   


“Is it a porno?” Glory snapped, “‘cuz…”

“Those romance mags you’ve been reading are getting dirty, hun?” Deacon drawled back, tutting. “Mind in the gutter.”

Glory crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway. Her eyes slid to Jeanne for a moment, and then a beat passed and she didn’t look away. Jeanne’s heart thudded against her ribs and she wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or excitement or both--at being caught, at  _ Glory _ doing the catching--but she  _ really _ didn’t have time for it. 

The relay was ready.

“Thanks for the news,” Jeanne said, pulling off Deacon’s glasses and sliding to the edge of the bed.

Glory nodded, her eyes darting back to Deacon. “God, you look naked without your glasses,” she said. “Put those things back on before I have to Abraxo my eyes.” 

Deacon batted his eyelashes at her, and tugged the shades from Jeanne’s half-numb fingers, slid them on his face. 

“Better?” he asked. 

Glory huffed. “Thank god. Get your ass dressed and to Sanctuary,” she said to Jeanne. “Dez is about to have a litter of mutant hounds over this. She wants you, now.”

“ _ Crisse, _ ” Jeanne hissed, annoyance flaring. “Tell her I’ll be up in an hour.”

Glory backed out of the room, shaking her head. “Since when did I become the fucking mailman?” 

Deacon busied himself with examining his nails. “It’s because you’ve got great delivery,” he said.

Glory snorted and stormed out of the room. Jeanne could hear her stomping all the way down the hall.

And like a grandfather clock’s first and second hand thudding to twelve midnight, it was time. Jeanne set her coffee carefully aside and stood. Deacon was already changing out of his dress and into his customary Minutemen getup he wore around Sanctuary.

“I...uh. I’ll meet you up in Sanctuary, yeah?” she said, trying to feel brave. Trying to pretend she wasn’t standing, barefoot in her skivvies.

Deacon nodded, hat in hand, and let his glasses slip down the bridge of his nose. “Don’t die, okay?” His throat hitched, swallowed hard and he licked his lips. If she stretched up on her toes she could kiss him.

“I’ll to my best,” she said.

“Your best is definitely good enough.” He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, smiled down at her. One touch of her hand to his and he shook himself, pushed his glasses up his nose, turned, and left.

As Jeanne dressed, she listed the reasons she was going to let a big, impossible machine break her down into her molecules. For Shaun. For Nate. For the Railroad. For Deacon. And for Glory. For Dez and Tom and Drummer Boy and Carrington. For H2-22. For synths. For answers.

_ But Shaun…  _ He wasn’t going to remember her. 

~~~

Jeanne held back as Desdemona surveyed her rag-tag troops, assembled within the confines of the relay build site. Glory, Deacon, Tinker Tom, and Fixer. A litt

“And we’re hot,” Tom said. “Signal’s tight.”

Jeanne pulled her duster tighter around her shoulders. She was as ready as she’d ever be. Clad in her big boots and jeans and an old button down, armed with her pip-boy and Deliverer, a knife in her boot, on her belt, and one inside her coat, along with a med kit and her lock picks. Her 10mm cartridges were carefully wrapped in ballistic weave pouches in case they decided to explode in the relay. Tom said he didn’t think they would. He’d tested a few with his own shortwave radio teleports and they came through fine. But one could never be too careful.

She felt eyes on her as the whir of machinery sped up, the dizzying blue glow of the relay catching her eye even as it hurt to look at.

She wanted to go to Deacon, hug him, tell him she’d be fine. Because she was worried now, in a way she hadn’t been before, about leaving him alone. But he wasn’t the hugging type, so he said, and all eyes would be on them if she did. Not that Glory didn’t know, now. At least some of it.  

“Fixer,” Dezdemona said, and she dragged her eyes away from Deacon. “You’ve got to make them think they’re on your side. As a newcomer to the Commonwealth, you have no history, no reason not to trust them--”

“They murdered my husband and stole my son.” Her teeth clenched at the memory, of Kellogg raising his .45 and shooting Nate neatly in the head as he held her baby. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to know why I’m there.”

“You’re going to have to sell them a lie. A good one. But stick as close to the truth as possible. You want answers.”

Fixer nodded. “I know how this works,” she said.

“Indeed.” Dez glanced at Deacon with a small frown. “You can do this. You’re the best newcomer Heavy the Railroad has ever seen. I believe in you.”

Fixer shifted, gritting her teeth at the pedantic pep-talk. She’d already come at this from every angle. She’d be entering the Institute as an intruder at best, an enemy at worst. Or as prey. But she’d do whatever it took to get Shaun out. After that, she’d do whatever possible to help the Railroad, and help synths. Stop the Institute’s sick verson of slavery. And if that meant playing nice, she would play nice. Learn everything she could. Try to keep the door propped open, even if she had to use her own neck to do it. It wasn’t the first time. 

“There is one thing,” Desdemona said. “The most closely guarded secret in the Railroad. You must find Patriot.”

Jeanne’s mind snapped from her racing, morbid thoughts of the future back to the present. “Who?” Who the hell was Patriot. And why had she not heard of this until now...

“They are our inside connection. The person who helps synths escape the Institute. We don’t know anything about them, their name, who they are, so we named them Patriot. Dozens of synths owe their lives to them. And we’ve never been able to make direct contact, only one way communication--messages that come with synths Patriot has freed. Now’s our chance to find out who they are.”

“And you’re only telling me about this  _ now? _ ” Fixer shot a glance at Deacon, who stood blank-faced and stiff.  She quashed the stab of annoyance--if they didn’t trust her with  _ this  _ until moments before the mission, what else might they know but not be telling her? She’d expected as much from Dez, but Deacon? Maybe a few months ago. 

Maybe she was being naive. 

_ Maudit  _ but compartmentalization could be bad for business. But it was no different than it had been with CAAB. Need-to-know, no matter how well you knew someone. No matter how much trust you’d built.

“I could have been preparing, making a plan--” she said, shaking her head with a scowl.

“We  _ have _ a plan,” Desdemona snapped. “This tape. Patriot sent the tape on an escaped synth about four months ago. It was H2-22, I believe.”

The hair on the back of Fixer’s neck stood up and paranoia flared. Four months. Four months ago she’s stepped out of the vault and into this hellish world. And poor H2…

“There’s a whisper protocol on it,” Dez said, marching on as if she hadn’t said anything disturbing. “You can use their network without being detected. Tom decoded most of it, and there’s a message we’re going to send back. Make contact. See what more we can do to help.”

She took the tape in numb fingers, making a fist around it as a snap of blue energy arched from the twin coils of the relay and drew her eye. Her stomach flared with fear along with the arch of light. Her hair stood on end even under her clothes, a static charge filling the air with the tang of ozone.

“Signal’s hot!” Tom cried. “This is a one way ticket, Fixer! On the platform, and you’re good! I think! Yeah...”

She took a step forward. The hardest one. Moving through mud. Than another. Easier. The hard plastic of the edges of the holotape dug into her hand. She didn’t look back as she climbed onto the metal platform, but Deacon and Glory circled around, jackals afraid to approach a curious object, features half sharp and half obscure, bodies throwing long shadows in the erratic blue light that lit Jeane up like a radstorm. Plasma fire flew off the power-source in molten blue sparks and the air snapped with a wild charge. 

Tom called out readings mixed with frantic prayers. There was nothing she could do now but trust. And maybe accept that this could be her final moment as a wholly materialized being. 

She wondered what would happen to her consciousness when she dissolved. Would it fly along with her, rejoin her reassembled parts, or was her sentience infused in every part of her brain, traveling along pathways, infused in her neurons, or deeper? In every fiber of her? Would she come back?

She looked down at the tape she’d been clutching in her hand, read the faded, peeling label.

_ Saint 2.0  _

A shock that had nothing to do with the burn of electricity went through her. No. It had to be coincidence.  _ Saint.  _ The name she’d used all those years ago in Alberta. Before she was Sophie Deckard, before she was Fixer. 

They knew. They knew everything about her. To go that far back. To know her name.

Fixer jerked, tried to take a step forward. They needed to stop. New plan. Abort mission. She was stuck in place.

“Don’t move!” Tom shouted, as if she  _ could _ . The relay shook and Tom swore as the roar turned into an electric howl.

“It’s a trap!” she shouted over the roar. The force of the energy kept her pinned like a centrifugal force, like she was spinning. Or underwater. She caught sight of Deacon as he tilted his head, frowning. 

“It’s not… They know…me!  _ Crisse _ !  _ Arette…  _ Stop…!” She shook her head frantically, tried to raise her arm to reach out, managed to raise it just a little and Deacon looked between her and Tom, face shadowed with panic  in the harsh light of the relay, said something she couldn’t hear. 

And then the world shifted blue and she couldn’t move at all.

The sensation of coming apart felt like nothing so much as dragging sock-clad feet over carpet. Shocks and tingles, pins and needles. And then it was liked drowning, all sensation muddied and slowed. And then it was like falling asleep. 

And then she found herself in a room. Fixer stood stock still for a moment, listening, breathing in great gasps. Her hands wandered her body, found everything in the right place. Limbs, torso. Head. Eyes. Deliverer, her pip-boy and her tools. Her jacket, inact. No ammo exploding in her pockets.

A room. Chambers beyond. She moved through the building, eyeing the terminals, blinking lights, clean, unrusted tech. Any terminal would do to find Patriot, but she was surely being observed. The tape would have to wait. 

_ Saint. _

How could they have known? 

A coincidence. 

She tried to convince herself. Surely a coincidence. 

A voice sounded over an intercom system. “ _ Welcome, wanderer.”  _

Fixer’s lip curled. Wanderer. Project Wanderer. They’d been  _ watching  _ her.

The voice continued on as she slunk down the hall to a round elevator shaft, big enough to be a silo.

_ “I wondered when you might make it here. You’re quite resourceful.”  _ A man. Possibly middle aged. Maybe older. “ _ I am called Father. The Institute is under my guidance.” _

The jaws of the trap were already around her throat, but the only way out was through. She wouldn’t speak. Not until she saw a face. Fixer stepped through the glass doors of the elevator and pressed the helpful little arrow that pointed downward. 

As she descended, Fixer looked up into the towering depths of the long, low lit silo shaft, yellow service lights spaced with a precise regularity she hadn’t seen since before the war. And then the semi-darkness opened up into bright space and Fixer lunged for something to hold on to, feeling like she’d hit free-fall. But it was just an open atrium, spanning floors and the elevator still made its elegant decent at the same sedate pace it had been before. Fixer watched, wide-eyed as she dropped past blue and white walls, blindingly clean. People hurrying to-and-fro in uniforms. No one so much as looked at her. Plants grew everywhere. Trees and ferns. There was a fucking  _ water feature.  _ The opulence was astounding. The whole placed reeked of arrogance. 

And then she was swallowed again by semi-darkness, and then the elevator stopped. And opened. And she stepped out into a long white hall. Felt like a march to the gallows. A cattle shoot. A long, dark fall.

And at the end of it, she saw him. A little boy. Pale, almost pallored sink that had rarely seen real sunshine. Hair so dark brown it was nearly black, like hers. He sat in a room of glass walls. It wasn’t a room. A  _ cage _ . Fixer knew a cage when she saw one.

She froze in the doorway. The boy didn’t see her, and she waited a few moments, heart thudding in her ears, breath caught in her throat. She waited. And nothing happened.

She took a step into the room.

“Shaun?” His name came out a croak. “Shawn…  _ mon petit _ \--Is that you?”

The boy turned, and bright hazel eyes lit up. Nate’s eyes. 

“Mom!” He ran to the glass, pressed his palms against it. 

She ran the rest of the way and fell to her knees. “Shaun…  _ mon chou _ …” She pressed her palms against his, only glass between them. Drank in his face. He looked like her. Had her freckles. Her blunt nose. And Nate’s eyes. “You know me?”

He smiled. Nate’s smile. Hit her like a truck. “Of course! Father told me you were coming to visit. I’ve been waiting.”

“Father?” Nate...was he… The flicker of stunned hope died as soon as it started. No. The man on the intercom. Said his name was Father. “You know me… Did you see… pictures? Sweetie, can you let me in?” 

She glanced around wildly, heart tearing at her chest like a rabid thing trying to make an escape. 

“I just know you,” he said. His smile so saccharine it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. None of this was right. All wrong. “Fathere’s the only one to open the door. And mom.”

Jeanne frowned at that. “Sweetie, I am… I am your mom.”   
  
“Of course you are,” he said. Another bright smile, and he backed away from the glass a few steps and sat down, picked up a comic and started reading, just like he had in Kellogg’s memory. “Father said you were coming,” he said again.

Something was wrong with him. For him to repeat himself like that. Not like he was affirming her presence but like he was...programed. 

And Jeanne knew.

Programed. Not her son at all. 

The sound of an automatic door sweeping open made Fixer stand, her stance wide, like she could put herself between the boy and whatever was going to come through the door. Deliverer felt alive in her hand as she raised it. 

A man stepped through the door. Middle aged--maybe his early sixties. He looked unwell, moved slowly. Behind him came an old woman, tiny and wrinkled. A stoop in her back making her smaller still. Hair, stark white and piled in a bun on her head.

The man looked at Shaun with cool, dispassionate eyes. Not unkind, but no life in them. 

“Recall Code: Cyrus,” he said.

And then Shaun slumped over where he sat on the floor. Folded like a ragdoll. 

“What are you doing!” Rage flared. Her baby... treated like a toy. Fixer took a step forward, her gun raised, her hand trembling so hard she wasn’t sure she could aim. She looked back and forth between the woman and the man. “Leave him alone! Bring him back!”

“Fascinating,” the man said. “I wasn’t expecting such genuine emotion.”

“Really?” said the woman. “From everything we’ve seen?”

Fixer’s eyes blazed, mind working frantically. Shaun was a synth. They’d been expecting her. 

Father. He had to be. And the woman?  

“Who are you?” Fixer asked. Her voice didn’t carry the command she wanted it to. Didn’t carry any weight at all.

“You don’t know?” The woman spoke. She had a familiar accent. Like Jeanne’s. She sounded like home.

Her eyes widened. Tiny woman. Brown, brown eyes. Freckles mixed with age spots. Two old scars, on her chin and her lip, just like the ones Jeanne had.

She really did hit freefall, then. The room staggered around her, her vision going red until she blinked it away. She renewed her grip on Deliverer. 

_ Pull the trigger. Kill her. End her.  _ The thoughts didn’t even feel like her own. Jeanne was the real one here. The one who mattered.

“I know…” she said. Her brows drew down, and as she spoke the words she knew, somehow, that they were true. “ _ Crisse.  _ You’re me. You’re Saint. Sophie Deckard.” She paused, face twisting in disgust as the realization took hold. “ _ Jeanne.” _

The woman nodded. Her expression was impossible to read amid the multitude of wrinkles. They stared at each other for a fraction of a second, for an hour, a whole lifetime passing between them. Jeanne’s finger twitched on the trigger.

Then the man spoke again, but she didn’t hear what he said. The room lurched again, and her mind disappeared.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy Handgrenade, batman. I've been sitting on this twist since FEBRUARY, my dudes. I've never planned and actually seen through a mindfuck plot twist like this before so I've learned some things and I wish I'd gotten here sooner but. Yah...
> 
> THANK YOU. For reading and sticking with this overzealous epic monstrosity of a fic. I love it and I love you, dear reader, and Jeanne and Deacon make me cry sometimes when I write them bein' together. I'm such a romantic sap I just want my children to have happy, healthy relationships with good communication and mutual support and respect, even amid all their hangups. <3_<3
> 
> Next up: (more) Insitute fuckery. Should be pretty quick, I think. I'll try not to leave you hanging for too long.


	25. You or Your Memory (Reprise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may recall wayyyy back in chapter six the 2nd person present thing I tried with Kellogg's memories? Well, here we are again...
> 
> Edit: forgot to add content warnings. brainwashing, non consensual medical procedures/drug use and I think that's it.

**_Sophie_ **

**_2227_ **

_ You die when Nate dies. You die because he was the only thing keeping you alive, and you couldn’t admit that he was your lifeline until the moment they severed it.  _

_ The sound of the gunshot never stops ringing in your ears, not for sixty years. _

_ The man—Kellogg, you learn his name quickly because people keep saying it like it’s a leash they can control him with—he lets you out. You are freezing and choking on the fluid in your lungs. He holds you down as you savage him. You wish you had a knife, a gun, something other than your nails, and your teeth, your rage. It’s not enough. One of the hazmat suits presses a shot into your neck as you scream, and all you can see is Shaun fussing in the arms of another hazmat suit and then the world blurs and you try to care but you can’t will yourself from medically induced docility.  _

_ Med-X. You know the side effects. You’ve administered the drug to so many people: your soldiers, your refugees, your comrades, all wounded in some line of duty or another--warmaking, resistance, survival. The dreamy haze makes the pain go away--the pain of thawing from who knows how long in cryostasis and the pain of watching Nate hanging lifeless from his pod. Anesthetized, but know there should be pain.  _

_ They hit you with another drug and the world goes black. _

_ When you wake up, the world is no longer made of dank and dripping concrete walls and pods full of dead neighbors and dead Nate. Instead it is clean and white and bright and full of medical equipment. Electromagnetic scanners and an odd pod with electrodes dangling to it. There is gel on your scalp, old and peeling.  _

_ Shaun is nowhere to be seen and you try to yell for him but your mouth is dry and your voice dies in your throat. You can’t stop coughing.  _

_ You meet a man who is in charge. He calls himself “the Director.” He’s lean and young, and hard faced. He welcomes you, tells you that the Institute needs your help. You try to attack him with nothing but tooth, and nail, and furious grief. You can’t stand, and fall flat, barefoot in a hospital gown. You are completely disarmed of all weapons—not that you had any on you to begin with—but your mind, your will, all the fight that has always been in you was utterly snuffed a ringing gunshot and the whimper of Shanu’s cries.  _

_ Where is your baby? There were people in hazmat suits. There are scientists. What are they doing with your baby? You ask. They give you answers. The world ended with the Great War. There’s nothing human left but cannibals and Raiders. Mutant animals. Decaying zombie humans. And radiation. Enough to kill a human, without taking precautions.  _

_ One hundred and fifty years have passed since you watched the bomb go off, south of Boston, and descended into the Vault.  _

_ Someone gives you water and you gulp it down and you are finally able to scream. _

_ It’s only afterwards that you know you went insane for awhile. Nothing made sense. You didn’t make sense. Jeanne or Sophie? Nate is dead, or alive. Shaun is… Shaun, where is Shaun?  _

_ They let you have your breakdown, gave you medicine and kept you separate, locked in a little glass room under twenty-four hour observation.  _

_ Your caretakers tell you, in your more lucid moments, that if you get well that you can have Suaun back. Sometimes they let you hold him. You can’t nurse anymore, too much time has passed and your milk is all dried up. The more time you spend with him, the more things start to make sense. You hold him, and bathe him, and these little things ground you, and you feel like Nate is there, a tall and steady ghost standing behind you, his big hands over smaller ones, long fingers curling around your palms as you care for your child. You shudder a little at the thought, imagine for just a moment that he’s really there and you want to lean back into his chest and close your eyes but it’s so cold.  _

_ You shiver. _

_ The Director sits on the other side of a glass wall and observes you while you hold Shaun. He tells you about the world and its destruction. You know. You were there at the genesis, that bright bomb on the southern outskirts of greater Boston and how the atomic wind came tearing towards you as you clutched Nate and Shaun and the platform lowered you into the vault. _

_ The Director says you are in the Institute. He tells you that your pre-war knowledge is essential to their mission: to redefine humanity, to make the world better by making humans better. Stronger, smarter, more kind. Your medical knowledge, your knowledge of the world before, will help guide the future of humanity. And Shaun’s DNA? It will make him the Father of all Synths.  _

_ But they killed Nate. An accident, the Director says. They wanted your family. As much of the old world as they could salvage. Kellogg was a poor choice.  _

_ They will let you keep your baby. Stay with them. They will take care of you and Shaun and you will want for nothing. You will never have to deal with radiation, or ghouls, or cannibals. You won’t have to fight anymore. An idea you were just getting used to, living stateside. Living in Sanctuary.  _

_ And you can help them. Remake the world. Make it better than it was, even before the war. _

_ And you won’t die.  _

_ But they killed Nate. _

_ Kellogg killed Nate. _

_ They bring him to you. You talk. He’s reasonable, but not sorry. They hand you his gun. A fine .45 revolver. He watches it like you’re holding his child, with concern. He looks surprised when you level it at his head and shoot him point blank. Your heart pounds, bile rises in your throat and relief fills your chest. You look at his brains on the floor and realize you know better than anyone where to shoot to injure, and where you shoot to kill. It’s too easy. You wish he’d seen it coming.  _

_ You watch them haul the body away. An end to it. Shooting Kellogg in the head doesn't bring Nate back from the dead, but you’re satisfied. Threat eliminated. Now you can focus on your child. _

_ Shaun grows quickly. _

_ They give you work in a lab. Bioscience needs extra hands hands familiar with human physiology. They are fascinated with your stories about the war before the war. You don’t tell them about annexation. You talk much about Nate. You never talk about how you used to be Jeanne. That is not a name for them to use or know. You’re Sophie Deckard now. _

_ You learn lab skills and find you are suited to it. You have always been meticulous. You teach the techs how to make their research applicable in the field. _

_ Shaun takes his first steps down in the atrium, by the flowering trees and the fountain, running over rocks like the ceiling might actually be the sky. _

_ Shuan such a fragile thing.  _

_ You know they are doing human testing in the FEV lab, but you can’t bring yourself to care. In this new world they can build humans at will. They can take them apart with impunity. _

Crisse _ , maybe the research will do some good.  _

_ Shaun a late bloomer, and because everyone around you speaks English, Shaun speaks English first and it breaks your heart.  _

_ You blame Vault-Tec, and America, and the splitting of atoms, and some nights, even sixty years later, you wake to the sound of a gunshot. _

_ You’re there for the first functional Generation 3 synth to open her eyes. Gray-green, like Shaun’s. And Nates. Her name is A1-00. She says ‘hello’. A blank slate. They give her happy memories. She lives in a glass room and they run tests, but she doesn’t seem to mind. _

_ A1-00’s family grows. They evolve. You start to worry when synths start escaping. They want to be free. Which means they were never free to begin with. _

 

**_2285_ **

_ “Mom?” he says.  _

_ Shaun has that tone he gets, measured and tentative, when he’s about to ask a philosophical question.  _

_ You look up from the lab notes you’ve been pouring over, the screen magnified more times than you’d care to admit, to aid your failing eyes.  _

_ Generation 4 is on the horizon. Questions of true autonomy and free will. Your aren’t sure if Generation 3 synths have free will or not, but you assume they must. Or if they do not, they appear to replicate it perfectly, which amounts to much the same thing, restricted only by their programing.  _

_ Quantitative and qualitative comparisons between Coursers, replicants, and originals has yielded little in the way of understanding. All the studies point to programing as key. Memory runs the programing. Lack of memory reveals base runtimes. Base runtimes… want to be free. _

_ You don’t know the fates of the ones you have helped escape with the assistance of the synth sympathizers, but you do know the Institute rarely reclaims them. _

_ “Mom?” Shaun says again. Your mind wanders these days. _

_ “What is it?” You say. In English. Always in English. _

_ “Would you have done things differently?” _

_ You watch him for a moment. Sixty years, nearly, and you know him better than anyone. A sweet boy, thoughtful and reserved. If he’s asking now, he’s been thinking about this for some time. _

_ Instead of answering, you shake your head. The regenerative therapies have stopped working in the past few years, and you feel the old ache of old bones. Ninety years on this earth, and though you appear in your 70s, your bones tell you it’s been a long, long time. _

_ “Why do you ask?” _

_ He starts to say something. Pauses. Folds his hands in his lap. “I-” he says. Starts again. “I have cancer.”  _

_ The words stop your heart. An old heart, not one able to take such a blow. The precautions you've taken. The decisions you've made. Not now, after all these years of sacrifice.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *keysmash* Ty all for putting up with my plot twist and trusting me (I hope) that it will all make sense. Man I feel bad for Jeanne/Sophie and oh boy things are gonna get wild(er). Major paradigm shift. Tagged canon divergent for a reason. This is the reason. :O


	26. Trace Decay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick retcon: Remember the American soldier who sold Jeanne out during a CAAB mission? gostofshe and I got to that point in our colab and things turned out differently than we expected. The “X” that’s mentioned here is the same one that betrayed her, but… he ended up not. Which is nice. Sorry for the change. It seems to be fate, Jeanne and Xavier are now pre-war best friends. Fixed in the chapter he’s mentioned in-- Chap 15: “Time for Proust.” >_> sorry. 
> 
> CW for captivity, mindfuck (hey this chapter is why this fic is tagged with mindfuck), medical stuff

Designation S1-00

Consciousness returned abruptly. There was no starting awake, like waking from a falling dream. No panic or disorientation. Only pure consciousness, all faculties at full capacity.

Jeanne hadn't been asleep. She’d been _off._ On standby. Powered down.

Her eyes snapped open. The light slammed into her eyes and she flinched, clamping them shut as floaters sparked gold and fizzled in her vision. She lay still for a few moments, listening.  The sound of electricity buzzed in a persistent, unnerving whine, like a distant bloatfly. Set her teeth on edge, put a tingle in her bones after months without consistent power. The dry air reeked of antiseptic and soap.

Her fingers curled into what felt like vinyl, slippery and textured to mimic leather.

She waited for voices. The sound of whispers. Perhaps footsteps. There was nothing save the electric thrum. Slowly, she opened her eyes, turning her head away from the blinding fluorescents to look at her surroundings.  

She lay on a white vinyl gurney in a blue and white room. Furniture lined the walls. Clean, smooth lines. Everything clean.

Jeanne sat up slowly, her body tight and controlled, buzzing with a new rush of adrenaline, and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She wore only a hospital gown, barefoot, feet dangling a few inches off the ground. She scanned the room more closely, knowing she wouldn’t find what she was looking for, but looked anyway. No sign of her gear. No Deliverer, nor pip-boy, nor her duster. Of course they would have disarmed her.

And in a hospital gown? Someone had undressed her. Bathed her. She looked down at her skin, free of grime. She smelled like soap. Cleaner than she’d been in months.

Jeanne shivered, her mind skittering away from where her body had been while she was asleep—no. Off.

And then she saw the glass. It made the room appear larger than it actually was—a twelve by eight cell. Jeanne knew a cage when she saw one, though this one was generous and well-defined by comparison. She was used to cages of concrete or metal, made of borders, or police lines. Made of new identities and visas. She’d never been in a glass cage before.

And beyond, sat a woman—an old woman—in a large chair with a broad round back, something that would have been in style just before the war. Jeanne was fairly sure she and Nate had a chair like that.

The woman watched her intently, her eyes bright and wet. “Hello,” the woman said, the word delivered with a shaky breath.

“You…” Rage woke in her as suddenly as consciousness had, drowning out the dull throb of panic. The revulsion that infused her every pore and violation of her mind and her body.

Jeanne stalked towards the glass wall, her steps short but sure, arms stiff, fists balled at her sides.

The old woman tilted her head. She looked to be about eighty. Pale, parchment skin, liver spotted. Wet, rheumy eyes. Brown irises, the whites gone yellow.

Jeanne took the last few steps at a run, fist balling as she slammed into the glass. A bone crunched, pain exploded in her hand. The glass didn’t budge. Jeanne staggered back a step, clutching her hand as pain took her mind for a white-hot moment before receding to a dull, furrious ache.

Sophie flinched, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry you found out like this. I thought maybe you would have figured it out before… I was hoping Virgil...”

“Bitch!” Jeanne threw herself at the glass again, slamming her broken hand against it, because the pain fueled her rage, feeling better than the alternative. She rebounded from the glass, leaving behind a red smear where the skin had split on her knuckles. “Where is Shaun?”

Sophie Deckard shook her head sadly, still gazing at Jeanne. “Which one?”

The words left her rage cooling into icey dread. “Which...one?” she echoed.

“You met them both. The child—the synth who might one day be your son. If you want him.”

“He’s a person _!_ Not a pet...! _”_

“People can be adopted. Think of it as a reunion. His mind is not quite ready, but it will be soon.”

_Not yet a person._ He was a construct. An emotional feedback loop, a string of pre-programed responses.

Jeanne dreaded asking but she needed to know. “And the other Shaun?”

“My biological son,” said the woman. “The director. Known as Father.” The way she said it, with a slight curl of her lip made Jeanne think she disliked the title. “They took me from the vault along with him. Sixty years ago. They used his DNA to create our living synths. Third Generation.”

“No,” Jeanne said. She stared, wild-eyed. If this was really Sophie Deckard… she’d been here. All this time. “You... They took him. Killed Nate. Froze me again. I saw it in…” She faltered. Kellogg was a synth— “...Kellogg’s memories,” she finished, feeling at a loss.

Sophie shook her head sadly. “A copy of Kellogg. Those memories of his in the vault were a construct to set you on your path here. Mostly true. We changed the end, so you would think you’d been put back to sleep. I killed the original Kellogg sixty years ago.”

Not the original. Like her. What he’d said to her at the end, laying half dismembered on the concrete floor in the basement of Fort Hagan. _A good death. A better death… This one I got to see coming._

Jeanne shook her head. “I saw his memories. Walked through them like they were my own.”

“All real.” Sophie looked like she pitied him. “The Institute recorded many memories in those early days. Do you know what trace decay is?”

Jeanne shook her head, though it felt detached from her body, slow and clumsy.

“Memory theory is fascinating. Memory recall isn’t perfect, it shrinks and changes. Human minds fill in the blanks, things twist and change, and our own bias and perceptions shape our past reality. Each time we remember something, it weakens the memory. To implant memories, we needed to understand how people remember.” Sophie looked down at her gently folded hands. “We had to trace the memory decay. So the Institute took snapshots. Of my memories. Of Kellogg’s. Of anyone who had been out in the world, who hadn't grown up underground.”

“Why?” The question echoed in her head, refracted a thousand times. It held such weight that Jeanne thought if she threw it against the glass, it might shatter. Freeing her. _Why?_

Sophie looked up, the brimming pity in her eyes making Jeanne’s gut lurch with renewed anger. “I gave a synth version Kellogg to you,” she said, almost gently. “For closure.”

Jeanne shuddered, choked on her breath. Nothing she’d done was her own choice. Not even her revenge.

And before the war… not… even then. “You’re responsible… You did this… The Institute, all of this... ”

“No. The Institute was well on it’s path by the time they—” Sophie’s face twisted slightly— “brought me here. I am responsible for only you. Project Wanderer. Your designation is S1-00. An exploration of free will. A product of the choices you make. We gave you a designation, but you chose your own name. I am responsible only for you. Because you are me.”

_S1-00_. Thrown into a vault and frozen. Released into the wasteland like some animal wearing a tracking collar, exploring a new habitat.

Consciousness and memory growing in the petri dish that was the apocalypse.

Pre war memories… a pre war life that wasn’t her’s. Jeanne curled her shoulders around her aching hand, clutching her wrist. Horror roped it’s way up her spine, radiating a chill which rattled her shoulders, trembling.

“Prove it,” she said through chattering teeth, her voice low and shaking. “Prove you didn’t just make me up. That I’m not just some sick pre-war fantasy.”

Sophie Deckard closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Her papery, rail-thin hands folded over her belly, she sighed. When she next spoke, she spoke in french, her accent coming through so powerful Jeanne took a step forward, drawn forward like Sophie’s voice was a lure. That lilt, hard and broad, a cadence she thought she’d never hear again. She sounded like home.

“ _Alberta, Canada. Outpost #381_. _A US_ _prison blacksite, among other things._ _A CAAB action. The last one I ever did as Saint. With X. Remember how it felt? Seeing your comrades flee while you lay bleeding on the concrete? Breaking into the high security wing—solitary. I...we? You—It’s so hard to use the right pronouns for us, as the same individuals—we opened the cell doors, and the soldiers looked up from their fight and we froze. Do you remember… what we said?”_

Jeanne swallowed hard. Nodded slowly. “I said, ‘Oops…. Wrong button’,” she whispered. In English. The words echoed in her mind, she could hear herself say the foolish line, clear as day, while the American soldiers and X stared at her.

Sophie chuckled, shook her weathered, white-haired head. “ _We were always funniest at the worst moments. And then we took a hostage. And then we make a mistake. Nearly fatal.”_

_“I shot him,”_ Jeanne said, slipping into her native tongue as easily as breathing, letting the old, sharp Quebecois transport her back, seven years. Back when she couldn’t hide her accent. The memory welled up. Reflected back at her as through a mirror, sharp and crystalline. As if it had happened yesterday. As if it were happening now. _9mm pressed to the US soldier’s skull as her comrades fled their imprisonment.  The thought of what those soldiers had done to her comrades, to...Erie. Her lover, her friends, to all of Canada. The thought of what her comrades had gone through worse torture than anything she endured after, when the soldiers had tormented her. Beat her, threatened worse._

_“Lost my temper,”_ Jeanne said, her voice hoarse. She clutched her hand to her chest, the pain no longer clear and grounding but an ache that sent her reeling, limbs disjointed, head floting and dizzy to the point of nausea. She resisted her body’s need to kneel, sink down in submission. No quarter. She was a _person._ Not a slave. Not a construct. Not the sum of someone else’s memories…

“ _Ouis,”_ Sophie said _. “A foolish mistake, made in anger. Then we got shot. And then we got arrested. Put in solitary. And tortured.”_

_“And freed. By X.”_

_“We are the same, Jeanne._ _Nous sommes les mêmes.”_

_“You could have written these memories. You could have seen them… Like I did Kellogg’s.”_

Sophie heaves a sigh and raised her head and their eyes locked. The same eyes. _“Look at me and tell me you don’t feel it”_

Jeanne stared at the woman, the quake in her muscles almost enough to rattle her teeth. Those eyes… Her eyes, with two centuries between them. Eyes that had actually seen the old world…

But Jeanne’s eyes? They had never seen anything before they’d opened in the vault.

_“Why?”_

“There are clothes in the dresser,” Sophie said in English. Changing the subject.

Sophie was obviously stalling, but Jeanne thought a bit of dignity amid the abject dehumanization might be nice. Dehumanization. Literally. She wasn’t… human.

Clothes. Something warm, without a draft up the back. Would stop her shivering. She couldn’t stop shivering.

Jeanne cast around, saw the chest of drawers a few feet away. She walked over to the unit, stiff legged and shaking, and pulled a drawer open. For one horrible moment she thought she might find only a vault suit. Some sort of mindfuck. The thing she was _born_ in. A reminder that she wasn’t real.

But inside were undergarments and in another drawer, gray and white bottoms made of a thick cotton, and t-shirts, impossibly clean. She cast a doubtful look at Sophie and then dressed with the aid of only one hand, cradling the other gingerly while trying to keep herself covered by her gown. Acutely aware that her neck and her chest were covered with blooming little bruises, the mark of teeth from the night before. She tried not to notice them, or the warm little glow in her belly at the thought of their cause.

And then a faint question rose to her mind,  one she didn’t want to know the answer to.

Had Deacon known, and not told her?

She ignored the creep of paranoia, set it aside for now as irrelevant. Dropped the hospital gown on the floor and took a slow few steps back towards the glass. Her good hand itched for a gun, for a crowbar, for anything to smash the glass with, to destroy Sophie Deckard with. The memory of young Shaun, slumped over at the sound of his recall code. Her not-son. Just as she was not-Jeanne.

“Why?” she asked again.

Sophie didn’t speak for a long time. Her eyes were closed, and Jeanne thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.

The she spoke without stirring, eyes still closed, not asleep but seemingly fallen into a trance, the switch back to french effortless and hypnotizing. “ _You have to understand what it was like. After Nate. The world ended. Our world ended with him, you must feel that. I had an infant. Six months old. They took us both. They let me raise him here. I had a lab. Fascinating work. Trying to make the world outside a bit better. That’s what they told me. I didn’t have to fight anymore. Isn’t that what we wanted, when we got to Sanctuary? Escaped the hell that would have killed us? Even if it was a mistake, not dying at home, on Canadian soil. Still defiant._

_“But as the Gen-3s developed, as I saw what they were becoming. I saw a mistake. That I had made. Another one. The first was leaving. The second was not. Really, that I’d stopped fighting. And then I had… a chance. To try again.”_ Sophie Deckard paused, opened her eyes. Staring at Jeanne with an unwavering gaze. Her spine straightened a bit from its bow as she sat up. “ _I had you.”_

Jeanne shook her head. How could she reconcile the woman she thought she was. _They_ were. With the broken old woman here, who’d given up. “ _So I’m… what? Your... redemption?”_

_“No. You are your own choices. I made mine long ago. Redemption would be nice, but it’s too late for me. I tried, but it’s not simple. To change a hundred minds. To change ten. To change one. It took years just to change my own.”_

“I don’t know who you are.” Jeanne leveled a point blank stare at the woman who sat before her, ancient and frail. A woman who had spent sixty years underground. For safety, for her son. So she wouldn’t have to fight anymore. Because it was _easy._  “You are _not_ me.”

Sophie nodded in solemn agreement. “ _They took a snapshot of my memories when they first brought me here. Like they did Kellogg’s. Took it from me without my permission, to preserve pre-war knowledge, they said. They did many things without my permission. Took infant Shaun’s DNA without my permission. Locked me up until I promised to cooperate. Every bit of ground I gained here was given with permission I had to beg for, prove myself worthy of._ ” Sophie shifted towards the edge of her chair, reached out one gnarled hand and pressed it against the glass so Jeanne could see the fine wrinkes and fingerprint whorls. Perhaps the only differcne between them where the little lines on the tips of their fingers. They had even given Jeanne Sophie’s pre war scars.

_“Those memory snapshots?”_ Sophie said, her eyes soft “ _They are you. I wanted to see what I could have been without the Institute._ ” She smiled faintly, tilted her head like Jeanne was a fascinating animal she’d never seen before. “ _And here you are.”_

Jeanne stood there, the tremble in her limbs not at all tempered by the warmer clothes. The walls felt tight, the cell airless and spinning, her head and stomach lurching in sick nausea as she shifted, the broken bones in her hand all wrong and grinding together. She tamped down the panic rising. “Let me out,” Jeanne said. The words came out in English.

“ _Pas encore,”_ Sophie said in french, shaking her head. Not now. “ _It won’t be like this forever,”_ she promised. She stood slowly, and Jeanne could almost hear an ache in her joints as her face pulled tight with the effort of movement.

“Wait…”

“ _I will keep them from running their tests for as long as I can_ ,” Sophie said.

Tests… of course they would want tests. To weigh and measure and invade every part of her, because she wasn’t _human._ “I do not consent,” she spat at the woman beyond the glass.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said. “No one’s written the rules for medical ethics regarding synths. And even if they had, no one follows the rules at the end of the world.”

“And you didn’t make them? You didn’t try, in all this time? You did _nothing..._ ”

Sophie shuffled up to the glass, so they were within arm’s reach. “You were lucky you didn’t have to worry about keeping Shaun alive. You just had to find him. _Mentant_ _,_ _je vous ai favorisé. Le premier de nombreux.”_

A favor. The first of many…

“I see no favors,” Jeanne said, her lip curling. “Just you. Judging your own life by measuring it to mine. _My_ life. _Ton vie ca vat pas de la_ _ç_ _hnoute!”_

Sophie’s life. Not worth a shit… worse than nothing. Only Shaun, the only thing she’d cared about. All these years the world above rotted and Sophie sat down here to care for a son that had become a monster. Wasted.

But the look in Sophie’s eyes, hard and sad and full of fire even behind the rheumy haze, made Jeanne take a step back. She felt that if she blinked, she might find herself on the other side of the glass, in an old, old body. Staring at her younger self.

Sophie’s chin rose proudly, and Jeanne felt herself returning the gesture, drawing herself up, as if one of them were a mirror.

“There is a med kit on the wall. You know how to mend a broken hand.” Sophie Deckard sounded haughty through the ancient waiver in her voice. And then she turned, and left.

Jeanne stared at the door long after it slid closed. She cradled her hand to her chest like it was a small animal, a fluttering bird

At last she tore her eyes away from the door. Held her hand away from her chest, glanced down at the bruise swelling. She bled from the split skin on her knuckles and her shirt soaked up the red, stark against against the pristine white fabric.

_Designation S1-00_. An impossible thing.

And yet… why had it never occurred to Jeanne that she might be a synth? When she thought about it, _she_ was impossible. Two-hundred years out of time. Her son… not her son. The boy. The synth. Like her. Every step leading her to the Institute by the nose.

And Deacon— there with her every step of the way.

Amari had her hooked up to the memory loungers. Was there a way to tell someone was a synth beyond opening up their skulls and finding synthetic components?

Did the Railroad know?

Did he—

She bit back a gasping sob, blinked away unspilled tears.

No. No time to wonder about Deacon. If her trust in him, her… _feelings_ for him, whatever they might be, had been misplaced, she’d deal with it later. He wasn’t here, and _damn_ she wished he was. That easy smile, a joke to make her roll her eyes. Arms warm and comforting, his mouth—  

No. Crisis mode. Time for triage.

She was trapped, but not helpless. Not completely. They weren’t torturing her beyond the usual unpleasantness of imprisonment and the general mindfuck of having her entire, already tenuous identity ripped from her. The former was most likely temporary. The latter, she’d deal with when she was free. She had to worry about what they would do to her, the tests and the touch she wanted to avoid.

Her body was not her own, here. They could wipe her memories. Change her. Make her remember things that were never real. Make her not _her_ anymore. The biggest threat.

Jeanne found herself swaying on the spot, staring back at the door where Sophie had vanished. She tore her gaze away and found the medkit on the wall. A stimpack would aid her broken hand, but it wouldn’t heal it entirely.

She grabbed the medkit and sank to the floor, digging through its contents. Found a stim and stabbed herself in the arm, the sting of the needle hardly registering through the pain in her hand. No local anaesthetic in the kit. She passed over the Med-X.  Looked down at her hand to find it a mess swelling and bruising. A boxer’s fracture. Fourth metacarpal bone out of place. A common injury from poorly formed punch during a brawl. Or punching inch-thick glass.

Jeanne licked her lips, laid her broken hand palm first on the pristine linoleum floor. Her fingers shook as she felt for the break, aligning her hand as naturally as she could, her ring finger curled because of the break. Took a deep, rattling breath. Steeled herself. Pressed her hand down carefully until a sharp pain warned her to stop.  She pressed down with her other hand, set the break back into place with a sick crunch of bone on bone. Her vision went white and her body spun her into a void of nausea. The sickening pain receded slowly, and Jeanne blinked, squinting against the clinical brightness of her cage. Found herself leaning against the gurney where she’d first come to consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I made myself sad. I’m not sure if I pulled this twist off just the way I wanted because of the whole writing-as-I-go thing. Another tricking thing I noticed is that y’all know what the signs of someone being a synth are: liking sweets, not losing or gaining weight, weird sleep patterns, obsessive behavior. I tried to fold some of those in but if I made it too heavy handed you’d have outsmarted me. 
> 
> I’m sure there are plot holes and maybe it came too far out of left field but...here we are. Lemme know in the comments if you have questions and man but I’d love some kind words right now if you are still enjoying because who knew a big plot twist was so anxious-making. Comments and kudos are the fancy lads I nibble on to keep me going. And yes, there’s more. >:) Thank you SO MUCH for reading and for comments and enthusiasm. And a huge thank you to ghostofshe, thewickedkat, and Kallika for all their help and feedback on this story. <3


	27. Suspicious Minds

Deacon

 

Deacon’s eyes went wide when he saw Fixer’s frantic headshake. Trapped on the platform, glowing blue, almost lit from within, she reached out, tried to call for help, and his heart dropped into his sneakers. 

“Something’s wrong...” The words had no power behind them. Hardly audible over the roar of the relay.

“Stop!” He managed so put some force behind the word, panic ripping it from deep in his chest. He fucking hated raising his voice, but icy, urgent fingers gripped his spine. “Turn it off! Fuck, Tom, something’s wrong!”

Something was horribly, horribly wrong. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. Locked on her horrified expression, like she’d seen a ghost. Eyes shadowed, features lit to the point that they were hardly distinguishable. Her eyes. Her mouth, half open. Brows furrowed. 

“Can’t, man!” Tom shouted back. “Oh, man it’s a one way ticket, the way this baby’s heating up!”

The tape… Something went wrong when she’d looked at the tape. He should have told her. But it wasn’t his secret. Dez ran the Institute contacts. Deacon was the wasteland expert. A mistake.  He’d seen the code, the messages. Send the synths towards Diamond City. They always headed there. Programed into them by this ‘Patriot’.

Something was horribly, horribly wrong. He went numb at the blinding flash of blue light that would have been painful if he wasn’t wearing his glasses. When the light snuffed out, she was gone.

Someone was shouting.  _ Get back _ .  _ She’s gonna blow… _

The ground trembled, but Deacons simply stared at the spot where Fixer had vanished while his mind screamed a single word, over and over like a blaring siren.  _ Mistake! Mistake!  _

Arms seized his waist, hurling him backwards. Someone landed hard on top of him, and the ground rocked with an explosion, the air burning. And then the site went deadly still save for this hiss and crackle of fizzing electronics. Someone coughed, and the weight over top of him stirred. 

“Idiot,” Glory grunted as she pushed herself off of him.

“I owe you my life,” he wheezed. “Gonna have to follow you around till I can replay the favor.” Glory shook her head, offered him a hand up and Deacon took it, finding his feet like he stood on the deck of a pitching ship. A muscle twinged in his back and he choked on the burning air, waving his hand in front of his face as if it might clear the smoke billowing from the generator. 

“Tom!” Desdemona’s voice cut over the crackle of electricity.

“Yeah Dez, I’m still living. Sorta… Wonder if the Institute sabotaged--”

Dez snapped a question. “Tom! Did Fixer make it?” 

Dez asked the question he didn't dare utter. Relief sagged in his chest, like he'd dodged a bullet. Coward.  Other questioned nipped at him. Was the alive? Did she make it? Would she come back?

The platform was covered in black soot, the metal shot through with jagged lines where electricity had shot through it. The two coils half melted. She’d vanished though, just before the thing had decided to explode. She’d vanished… 

“I dunno Dez, I don’t have a magic eight ball to see Institute and make sure she got there! Signal’s one way and it’s done. The teleport is, ya know, instant. Almost. But…”

“Something went wrong there, Dez,” Deacon said, taking a shaky step forward. His voice sounded funny to his ears, kind of stuck. His mouth was too try. “Besides the whole… exploding relay thing.”

“She panicked,” Dez said. “It could have happened to anyone. Wouldn’t you, if you were about to teleport into unknown enemy territory?”

Deacon bristled, the idea of Fixer panicking plain offensive. “Fixer’s not capable panic.” Well, she didn’t panic without  _ reason.  _

“You think highly of her, I know,” Dez said, frowning at him. “But we need to face reality here.”

Somewhere behind them, Glory snorted. Deacon ignored her. He cracked his neck, took a deep, unsatisfying breath. The air burned with ozone. The stench overbearing. Making him dizzy. Or maybe that was the worry. An edge of despair. 

If he never saw her again... A hollow rush in his throat at the thought. Speechless, for a moment. Another breath, and he shook his head slowly, like he was thinking instead of panicking.   

“She looked at the tape, just before she freaked,” he said slowly. “The Patriot tape. Saw something on it. What was it.”

Dez frowned. “What it was labeled. ‘Saint 2.0.’’’

“The name of the whisper system,” Tom chimed in. 

“Does that mean anything to you?” Dez’s eyes narrowed at him. “You’re the Fixer expert. What’s the intel?”

Deacon shook his head. He felt like it  _ should  _ know. But he couldn’t place it. And that left a sinking hole in his chest. He was starting to feel like a piece of that cheese they mad at the Slog. The one with the holes in it. Thin and bitter and full of holes. He didn’t know, and it meant that he hadn’t done his fucking job. Not properly. 

“All Greek to me, boss,” he said. 

Nothing and nothing.

“You come up with anything, you get the intel to me right away,” Dez said. She straightened up, standing tall amid the wreckage of the relay. 

“Deacon, you go wait at the old HQ for Fixer to return, and run the dead drops in the area. Give it a week. If she’s not back, we cross her off the list and regroup with a new plan.”

A week. Alone. It felt like a death sentence. 

Dez snapped out the last of her marching orders. “Glory, check in with new HQ and then get that new package to Amari. Tom and I will meet you at HQ in a few days.”

Deacon slunk into the shadows of the fence as the Relay site burst into a flurry of activity. Preston and Sturges burst into the site, their faces drawn and concerned, almost angry. Something about endangering the settlement. Demanding news of Fixer-- _ Jeanne _ the called her. Glory faced off with them as Codsworth arrived and Deacon slipped past them, and let his feet carry him back to the place he had avoided since the first night he’d laid eyes on Jeanne.

Her house stood empty amid the new buildings, like a little lump of the past forgotten by progress. Deacon slipped in through the back door. Looked around with hollow eyes. The perfect little kitchen, The living room, with it’s dead TV and crooked couch. Vestiges of the old world. He could almost see what it was like, clean and two hundred years younger. 

What he couldn’t see was Jeanne, fitting in her. Fierce and capable, rifle toting, knife-wielding, foul mouthed refugee from an occupied country, sitting here, watching TV with her kind-faced, sweetheart of a husband. Baby at her breast. 

Had she been miserable? Trapped her? She’d lost the fight, and that day she’d had a breakdown after he’d confessed to stalking her. Maybe she’d lost something she’d never wanted in the first place.

He went into the master bedroom. The vault suit he’d found in the corner, all those months ago was folded neatly and laid on the dresser. 

The safe… He shoved the dresser aside, found it closed, not like it had been when he’d snooped here before. He dug out his lockpicks, grumbling as he fussed with the mechanisms. Broke three bobby pins because his hands kept shaking. He wished Fixer was here to sic on the lock. Or just open it, because...she might even have a key. And if she was here he wouldn’t have to snoop, anyway. He could just… ask her.

Kiss her. 

Say he was so, so, sorry. 

Because something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. 

The lock sprung open. Inside was dust. Some immigration papers. Pre-war bureaucratic nonsense.  _ Sophie Deckard _ . Shaun’s birth certificate. ID cards. He scanned the documents. Nothing.  _ Nothing _ .

He sat his ass on the floor, holding the vestiges of Jeanne’s life in Boston. Papers full of lies.

She’d gone by Sophie?

So why Jeanne?

Because she was free. Didn’t have to pretend to be someone else to keep herself safe. From all the things she’d done. In the name of freedom. She was so young. Too young to have gone through everything she had before the war. What life had done to her made her seem older, on par with his experiences. And it hurt, to know at least a little of what she’d suffered. 

“Earth to Deacon?” 

Deacon jumped, sending the ancient papers flying. His hand was halfway to the gun that wasn’t at his hip. Left it back at the Rocket, along with all his other gear.

Glory stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. With him seated on the floor she loomed in her ruffled, armored Heavy coat. 

He blinked a few times, as if waking abruptly from sleep. “Roger, Glory. Read you loud and clear. What’s up?”

“Damn. When’d you get so jumpy?”

“When you started following me around asking a bunch of questions?”

Glory dropped her hands from her hips and leaned against the door, ignoring his barb. “You ready to head out?”

Deacon blinked again. “Together?” 

“I hate being seen with you,” Glory said. “Because you’re embarrassing. But if we’re heading the same way, might as fucking well.” 

Deacon huffed as he weighed his options. Glory was going to corner him, ask invasive questions about Fixer. And him. And him and Fixer. But one of Deacon’s rules was not to be fucking stupid, and he was in a bad way, and traveling alone while in a bad way was fucking stupid. 

“Might as well,” Deacon echoed. 

“Good,” Glory said. Let’s move it.” She gave the papers in his hand a curious glance, and Deacon shoved them back in the safe and flipped the door closed. 

~~~

He collected the things left scattered at the Rocket. Glory lingered by the road, the morning mist finally burning off into a bright, clear noontime. Deacon was greatful, at least, that she wasn’t dogging his steps. 

His clothes, scattered on the way to the bedroom. Smelled like her. His 10mm and her rifle sat on the workbench in the garage. She’d upgraded the silencer on his pistol just a few days past. She was always fiddling with their guns, cleaning them, upgrading bits and pieces. Deacon considered her rifle--the Tinker Tom special--for a moment. She’d want it, when she got back. So he slung it over his shoulder. 

Shoved the coffee in his bag. Found the dress on Fixer’s bed. Smooth and smelling of plant dye. His heart gave a squeeze. Nicest thing anyone had done for him. Maybe ever. Not since Barbara. Sure, settlers fed him and gave him little gifts now and then when he stopped by, the cheerful drifter or the quiet tinker. But this. Fixer had made it for  _ him.  _ Deacon. 

Deacon frowned and gave the room one last look. Clothes littered the floor. Her bag sat half empty in one corner, her medkit along with it. It was hard to fathom Fix without that faded red plus sign strapped to the side of her bag. It was a sight he’d marked many times in their wanderings, a way to track her, keep sight of her when they were under fire. He unstrapped her medkit from her bag and shoved it in his on top of the coffee and the dress in his own. She’d want that to.  

He stared at the bed for a moment, then jerked himself back to the present. Time to go. As much as he wanted to curl up there, think about all the things they’d done there, together. How she felt writing under his hands, the noises, how she’d kissed him with a desperation that made his heart hurt for her. How utterly un-Fixer-like she’d been that night, the night they didn’t know was their last. It was time to go. 

~~~

The trip back to Boston Common was a blur of vague impressions and nausea. 

Ferals in Concord. 

Sweet-talking their way around a BoS patrol. 

Glory snapping at him when he took a hit from a raider he’d missed when clearing out an encampment as they slunk past Bunker Hill. 

And then Deacon blinked and found himself on the bridge spanning the river, the steeple of the Old North Church just visible amid the bristle of rooftops and bare branches combing the horizon.

Glory halted once they reached the south side of the bridge. 

“You don’t have to go back,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Deacon’s feet slowed, but he didn’t stop until he found the shadows of an alley. 

“Appreciate the concern, but I'm homesick. I’m an honorary member of the skeleton club and we  have a pinochle tournament tonight I'd hate to miss.” 

Glory sighed trailing him so they were both in cover. “Look,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell pinochle is but Fixer’s not gonna get back right away. Dez wanted her to infiltrate, right? I’ve got a synth to run—” 

Deacon shook his head. “While I’m touched—and slightly puzzled—by your sudden and keen interest in my travel and lodging arrangements, don’t you usually... uh… work alone? I recall a heap of bitching and moaning last time we ran an op together.”

Glory scowled at him, and he could tell her patience was already wearing thin. Just a bit more obliviousness and a few more glib lines and she’d get fed up and leave him in peace. And quiet. And whatever waited for him in the crypt below the Old North Church. Maybe he’d actually set up the skeletons and deal hands for them. 

Except that nothing waited for him there. That was the problem.

Glory dropped her minigun with a thump. “Deacon, how long have we known each other?”

“How long? Feels like a lifetime. Of fun. And danger. But mostly danger.”

“Five years.” She glared at him, as if it were his doing that they’d known each other that long.     
“Five years since I’ve been out here, free of…  _ them.  _ And you know what one of my earliest memories was when I got to HQ?”

“Are you giving me three guesses?” He raised an eyebrow, trying to hide the panic rising as Glory bore down her scrutiny. He cleared his throat. “First guess. When Dez and Carrington arm wrestled for supreme leadership of the Railroad… or maybe that was before your time…”   


“No, Deacon. It was you. All these grim-faced agents, a whole bunch of misfits. And I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into. If maybe I wouldn’t be better off on my own. I was nervous as hell. New and stupid and raw. And you strolled into the Switchboard--different face, back then, but the same stupid sunglasses. And you were lying to Tommy W. about  _ something.  _ A deathclaw match you saw, or something, I don’t fucking know. Some bullshit. Made him laugh. First time I heard anyone in all of HQ laugh.”

“This is a real charming heart-to-heart,” said Deacon, the back-to-the-wall bite to his words catching him off-guard. He studied Glory for a moment, head tilting as he tried to suss out her angle, what she felt like she could corner him and highlight his history of bullshit. Whatever she was up to, he could play ball. “The first thing I remember about you is you cussing someone out for saying that synths were helpless. Came to blows, actually. It was honestly a little scary. Kinda like right now.”

She ignored the softball barb. Her persistent frown deepened, hands planting on her hips as she huffed at him. “You know better than anyone that this isn’t a game.” 

Deacon stared at her for a moment, the deep thrum of discomfort mounting as his hackles rose, telling him to bolt.

Glory rushed on in the absence of a reply. “I’m real concerned about you. You’ve been out of it. Even before the relay. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

And he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say in reply. Not anything funny, anyway. He shook his head.

“I’m fine—”

“No, you’re not,” Glory snapped. “An hour before Fixer zapped herself to the Institute, I walked in on the two of you getting freaky, or whatever it was you were doing. And I know it’s all smoke and mirrors with you, Deacon, but you’re a little bit more transparent than you like to think. I’ve never seen you like this. The way you are around her. You’ve got stars in your eyes, and it’s making you more blind than those stupid sunglasses when you wear ‘em in the dark.”

“I didn’t know you were such a wordsmith. You should take over writing speeches for Dez. Actually give us something to believe in.”

“You’re compromised,” she said.  

The accusation fell between them like a bag of rocks. Heavy... rocks of truth. Truth rocks. 

“I’m—” He took a breath. Rallying himself as he prepared for a big, fat lie. “You don’t get it. None of you do. Fixer  _ is  _ the job. The future of the Railroad. Whatever tie she’s got to the Institute is the key. And I didn’t do my fucking job, Glory. I don’t know why she’s the key, and something went wrong and I don’t know what it is either, and now she’s gone and she might be… might be—” He took a deep breath. Couldn’t finish the sentence. 

Glory’s eyes grew wider and wider as he spoke. “Oh my god,” she whispered. Her eyes lit up with something knowing and her hands dropped from her hips. Her frown softened. She smiled a little, eyes so touched with pity that it made him bristle. 

“What?” he snapped. “You look like you just saw a puppy.”

The soft look dropped from her eyes and her smile broadened, toothy and exasperating. 

“ _ What?”  _ he asked again, his hands flying skyward. 

Glory shook her head. “Just… come with me? For a few days.”

“I’ve gotta wait—”

Glory huffed at him and her frown returned, making Deacon feel like he was back in familiar territory. “You want to sit around, alone down in a crypt with dust and bones? Be my guest. But I got a few packages to run and I could use your help. I  _ know _ sitting around while there’s shit to do is not really your M.O. C’mon, Deacon. I’m not gonna beg. You’re coming or your not. And I’m leaving, right now.” 

Deacon wavered. Thought about how he deserved nothing more than a week of isolation. Reflect and repent. Work on some new jokes. Maybe plan a new look. New face. Start over again, when she didn’t come back. 

Or he could pretend nothing had changed. That sounded better. Yeah. 

“Yeah,” he said, feeling stiff, like a puppet who’s puppet master had abandoned. “Sounds good. Fan-fucking-tastic.” He spread his hands, the gesture flat and two dimensional, like unfolding cardboard. “Where to?”

And he realized he didn’t actually know. Because he hadn’t been doing the dead drops or calling in ops. Because Fixer. 

~~~

“This sucks,” Glory said, glaring out at the driving rain from under the eves. Water cut down against the view of the house across the way. 

It was day four of running between synth ops and checking old HQ, which stood cold and empty. It echoed of the Switchboard, all the trappings stripped. At least this time there were no cold bodies, just ancient skeletons. There was also no Fixer. Two synths in four days, though. More action from the Institute than Deacon had seen in months. Maybe Fixer would stay down there, on the inside. Maybe she was sending them herself. 

She could have at least sent a note.

Now Old Man Stockton was bringing a package up from Bunker Hill and he and Glory waited for the lantern light in the window. Standard op. Except he was running it with Glory. 

“There is water leaking down my spine,” she grumbled, shifting a bit.

“Rain gets a bad rap,” he said, staring into the darkness as he waited for the light to flicker on. “Mud, on the other hand...”

“Shut up,” Glory snapped, but he’d already trailed off. A weak light cut through the rain, flickering like it wanted to go out.

Glory took a deep breath and plunged into the downpour, Deacon on her heels. Moments later they were across the street and inside the old house, both looking like drowned molerats.

“What was that you said about rain having a bad rap?” she hissed, setting down her minigun with a soft thump and running her fingers through her tangled hair.

“Night like this is good cover,” he said.

“Yeah well. We’re going to hang out where there’s no mud, and no rain until this blows over.” She stalked down the hall and slipped through the door, but Deacon stood rooted to the spot.

“Do you have a geiger counter?” he heard Old Man Stockton ask. 

“Mine’s in the shop,” Glory replied with a bored sigh. Her voice grew soft, a murmur of conversation. There was a bit of chatter, some introductions. Deacon should go in there and say hello himself. Instead he peered through the crack in the door and caught sight of the synth they’d be escorting. A gangly man with shoulder length hair a little darker than Fixer’s.

He took a breath. Wondered when she was going to stop intruding on his thoughts. It wasn’t as if he didn’t think about her enough  _ intentionally.  _ She was never really far--

“I was told to give this to whoever came and found me,” the synth said, holding out a large white bag, looked new-made, like it had never seen a hint of rads or sunlight or a fleck of dirt. Glory’s hands appeared in his view and took the bag, then both dropped from his sight. “I tried to give it to Mr. Old but he said to wait.”

Deacon frowned. That was unusual. The last thing that had been smuggled out of the Institute on an escaping synth had been Patriot’s holotape, months ago. Before Fixer had de-thawed. Dubious timing, he realized now. Guilt pinged him in the gut.  _ Hello, yes? The tape you should have told her about? _

And there he went again, cycling back around to Fixer. He really needed to schedule some ruminating time. One hour, once a day to think about her, and that was it. Instead his mind pulled at thoughts of her like someone dying of thirst finding a puddle of water. 

He heard a shuffle and then a hush crept over the room. The synth shifted from foot to foot, looking apprehensive, and a chill crept up Deacon’s spine.

“Deacon?” 

He jumped a little at the sound of his own name. “Inside voice, Glory,” he called back.

“You’re going to want to see this…” Her voice sounded odd in a way he’d never heard before. Choked. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Again. Of course, everything was wrong with the Institute. He never should have let her go… Biggest mistake he’d ever made, working for the Railroad, at least. 

Deacon pushed through the door and gave the room a once-over. Stockton hovered near the synth, both watching him.

“Who’s that?” the synth whispered.

Glory held out the bag, the flap open so he could see a rumpled, dark shape inside, as if it had been taken out and then hastily shoved back inside. 

“A friend,” Stockton said. “He’s with Glory.”

Deacon took the bag with buzzing fingers. The brown leather inside, with its scuffs and wear, butter soft and rich smelling. He looked up at Glory with wide eyes she couldn’t see behind his glasses. 

As if his face confirmed it, Glory nodded. Her eyebrows knitted together eyes shadowed with concern that Deacon never expected to see. It made him take a step back, the Institute bag clutched in his hands.

“Thought so…” she said. 

“I… uh…” He cast a look towards the synth they were supposed to be helping and swallowed hard. The man raised his eyebrows. 

“Was it wrong?” asked the synth. “To bring it? I’m—”

Deacon shook his head. “Naw,” he managed. Cleared his throat and took another step back towards the door, holding the bag out in front of him like it was a dead animal. “It’s good intel. You did good. Glory you wanna meet me back at—”

“Yeah,” she said, clipping the end of his sentence. “I need to get Q4-71 to High Rise.” 

Deacon nodded, his head bobbing like it was on a spring. The bag felt too heavy to just hold the coat. Dragged down on his arms. 

“I’m gonna… go. See what door prize our friends inside left us with.”

He stumbled back through the doorway, fleeing the three sets of eyes that watched him. He kicked the door shut behind him and cast around. Hunted for a nook, a cranny, anywhere he could hide for a few minutes. Collect himself.

Crumbling stairs led up to a second floor landing. He stepped over a dead ghoul, checked the corners of the room. Another door, a bedroom. He sank down on the half collapes bed. The bag in his lap. 

Deep breaths. Steady. This was something. A clue. It felt like a promise. A threat, maybe. 

He heard quiet murmurs downstairs, the sound of doors creaking. And then silence. He sat in the quiet a long time, trying to pull some of that stillness into him before he shifted, the creak of bedsprings like a deathclaw shriek after soaking in the quiet. Deacon took a deep breath. The smell of mold and rot assaulted his nose as he looked down at the bag. 

He let the bag fall open and pulled her coat. The smell of leather drove away the stench of rot. The smell of leather. And  _ her.  _ Did whoever sent this  _ know _ ? The smell of her drove into his chest like a spike. A deep breath. His fingers twitched, remembering the way he resized the coat for her little frame, making sure it would fit her narrow shoulders, her wide hips. How he worked the leather for her, a thick needle driving in and out of the old, worn material, stubborn until he convinced it to yield, adding ballistic weave quietly between the leather and the lining. 

He examined the coat, looked for new damage. Nothing. Just some old burn holes from fighting off Gunners, but that was from a few days before the relay. He folded the coat in half, laid it out on the bed beside him, smoothing creases. Made it look nice, like she’d come put it on in a few minutes. Like she was in the next room, getting ready for their next op.

There was more in the bag. He fished out her pip boy, heart sinking. Why? She didn’t wear the thing often, kept it in her pack. Too obvious. Marked her as a vaultie, even if she wasn’t really. 

He ran his thumb over the screen, flicked it on. The green glow against the black made his eyes hurt. Her meticulous map popped up, marked with key locations. He popped open the holotape player. Empty.

Why send her things back? The things that defined her, kept her safe. Made her dangerous. Marked her as unique. Had she done it? Because she was coming back soon and needed to smuggle things out? Because she wasn’t back. Because she was—

One more thing, in the bottom of the bag. Deliverer. 

He picked up the gun. It felt like an omen. A curse. Tommy, and now Fixer. 

He set the gun on top of the coat. Turned the bag inside out, fingers growing frantic as he searched for a note, for anything else that might indicate what the fuck this meant. 

His fingers brushed the hard edge of a holotape tucked in a side pocket. He pulled it out. No label. 

The bag fell from his numb fingers to hit the floor, and he popped the tape into the pip boy. 

He thumbed to the new menu item, into the sub-menus. Coordinates. A radio frequency. A new marker, placed on the map. Right above the CIT.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! There will probably be another, longer wait due to holidays and as I wrangle the next few chapters into place plot wise and adjust to the paradigm shift. I'm Emotional about this. And poor Deacon. 
> 
> Thank you!! For reading!! 200 kudos milestone and I kind of can't believe it. Also this fic is long as shit wow but and there's sort of an end in sight. I think this concludes Act 2. <333


	28. The Master Calls a Butterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay... So much Life Stuff (TM) going on, and I didn't want to post this chapter until the next one was finalized. Had to make sure of continuity, and the chapter after this one provides some closure from the stress and angst, didn't want to leave people hanging. Chapter 29 (omg how did it get this long...?) upcoming in the next few days! 
> 
> CW for continued mindfuckery/imprisonment AKA poor Fixer. :(
> 
> Thank you all, again and always, for your wonderful comments. <3

What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

-Richard Bach, _Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah_

  
  


S1-00

They showed her where she was born. 

_ Made _ .

Wrapped in a damp cotton cloud of numbness, Jeanne watched as a synth was created. Her chest felt like a sagging bridge, burdened beyond the load it was built to carry and she struggled through shallow, slow breaths. Dizzy. Hard to focus, the room going soft and dim at the edges. Her blood pressure must be low. Blood sugar, too.

Funny that a body reacted to severe psychological trauma the same way it might from a physical injury. Funny that her body went into shock exactly the way a human’s would. The thought occurred to her dimly that human reactions were exactly the point. 

The synth fabricator moved with hypnotic precision. First skeleton, then nerves, then muscle, suspended in a perfect circle of white, spread-eagle Vitruvian physiology, immodest and impersonal. Lowered into a vat of stem-cells, a miasma stench of bio-matter filtered through her clean-suit hazmat mask. 

A courser stood behind her as she watched, a tall man wearing the gray leather coat , sunglasses and a bland frown. Designation X6-88. Her guard and guide. 

“How many are produced a day?” she asked one of the scientists. 

The hazmat mask turned to her and Jeanne’s balance wavered. For a moment she was back in the vault, Shaun wailing, Nate fighting, her fists pounding on the frozen window. Everything muffled.

She remembered with perfect clarity, but it wasn’t  _ her’s.  _

X6-88 stood like a plank behind her. “You may answer S1-00’s questions,” he said to the scientist. “Ms. Deckard has given clearance.” Jeanne took comfort in his presence. He eased her way, made her look compliant. Like a guard that wouldn’t let anything happen to her here. No harm. And no escape. She had to tread carefully.

The face of the hazmat suit nodded. “We can produce up to five a day, but often lack the power. And don’t have the resources to sustain a population. We generally produce five a week.”

Jeanne had no response. Numbly, she watched the whir of machinery calcified bone and weave nerves and conductors through the body like a spider weaving a web. She watched as the frame dipped into the red vat, and then watched as a whole person emerged, standing naked, rivulets of thick blood running down their skin. 

“Can I talk to them?” she asked the scientist. What had Sophie said? Every bit of ground she gained, she asked for. Had to ask permission. Be granted permission for everything. 

“Sure,” the scientist said. “Go ahead.”

Jeanne approached the newly born synth. “Hello,” she said. She wished she wasn’t in a cleanroom suit. Wished the first face the synth saw was not behind a mask. 

“Hello,” the synth replied. They had green eyes. Brown skin. They looked sort of like Glory. 

“How do you feel?” Jeanne asked. 

“Fine,” said the synth, their eyes drifting from Jeanne to stare straight ahead. They walked forward, past her, their steps sure and measured.

“Wait…” Jeanne trailed after them, noting their wet, bloody footprints on the lenolim path that lead to a door. Jeanne tried to see past when it opened, but an arm barred her path. She looked up to see X6-88 staring down at her, and for a moment the sunglasses sent her spinning. Aviators. Not like Deacon’s but the mirrors of the lenses shooting her reflection back…

“That’s far enough,” he said, his voice rich but devoid of intonation. 

Jeanne stared up at him for a moment, and then nodded and took a step back, turned to the scientist. “Does it hurt,” she asked. “To be born like this?” 

The scientist didn’t look up from the terminal, gave their answer to the screen. “Their pain centers are switched off until they are prepared for memory and personality implants in Programing and Testing. We can control certain functions. Sleep and REM. Pain. Emotional response. That sort of thing.”

Jeanne nodded. Realized she hadn’t slept since waking up in her glass cage. Felt no need to, just an itchy anxiety like she was forgetting to do something vital.

X6-88 towered nearly a foot above her, staring down like he was inspecting a small insect. “You may also see the Bio Labs if you wish.” 

Jeanne studied him for a long moment. “I’d like to,” she said, but couldn't help cast a glance back towards the now inert synth replicator. 

And when X6 took her to the lab, Jeanne saw why Sophie must have stayed. Genetic engineering of long-extinct animals. Cats, gorillas. Bio-medicine. Stimpacks that could heal broken bones. The reason her hand was no longer shattered. She flexed her fingers, noting only a slight ache where once her metacarpals had been shattered.

As she wandered among the scientists, looked at project summaries, terminal entries, the sinking feeling in her stomach collapsed into a pit. In a way, Sophie had been right. Who was Jeanne to demand that someone leave all of these resources, all of this  _ potential.  _

Would she have left all of this in the hands of madmen? She swallowed hard, feeling suddenly  dizzy with ripples of what-ifs and if-onlys edging into reality. She needed to sit down, be alone.  

“I’d like to return to my room,” she said, her voice wavering.

“Are you feeling unwell?” X6 looked at her sharply. “I will have to report any malfunctions.”

Jeanne gathered herself, shaking off the indignant bristle the word  _ malfunctions  _ sent through her shoulders. “I’d just like to rest for a while.”

X6 hardly nodded as he swept her back to her little cell. The door slid shut and he turned to take his post outside the observation room. 

“Wait,” she called. 

X6 turned back to her, sunglasses locking with her eyes. It was so unlike looking at Deacon through his shades. Jeanne could feel the ice of X6-88’s gaze, the impartial judgement. 

She took a hesitant step forward. Then another. Butterfly against glass. Fluttering. Unsure. Did she want to know because she was curious? Because she wanted X6 to trust her. Endear herself. Connect.

“Do you like it here?” She asked. 

X6 continued his hard stare, mouth a straight line. His shoulders drew up a little, his feet shifting. Defensive. Jeanne tilted her head. Doubt.

“It is not a matter of like or dislike,” he said. “It’s where we belong.”

“We?” She said, already knowing what he meant. “Who is we?”

“Synths, ma’am.” His voice flat, totally bland. Jeanne frowned at that. Ma’am. Honorific. 

“But do you like it here?”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I take pride in my duties.” He paused, raising his chin proudly. “Father and Mrs. Deckard have a vision for the future of mankind. And you are their family. You are part of that future. You will like it here too, if you open your mind to the possibilities the Institute offers. What it means, to be a synth.” He watched her still, and it dawned on Jeanne that X6 was much more than a grunt. He was weighing and measuring  _ her,  _ as much as she was him. But… brainwashed. His participation in her captivity not complicit but compulsory. Possibly. Free will was a blurry line when someone was responsible for programing your very essence. She felt sorry for him. Wondered what it might be like if he decided he wanted to be free. If maybe she could help. The Railroad could help. 

“Perhaps,” she said. Maybe not loud enough for him to hear through the glass. 

And then she drifted away. As prisons went, this glass cage was a comfortable one. Clean clothes. Food: gray protein paste and pure, crystalline water. A heavy armchair. A radio. Some books and magazines. A bed, though Jeanne hadn’t felt tired in… hours? Days? She had no idea how much time had passed. The prison cell had a bathroom. She turned on the radio as she drifted towards the bathroom. They got Diamond City down here. Travis Miles said something about more tomorrows, and the tune she’d heard three hundred times since waking up wavered into the little bathroom through the open door. 

She used the toilet. A perfectly normal function, but it made her wonder  _ why.  _ Her body, her every need and urge was totally human. Why make synths as close to human as possible? Why not make them something  _ new _ ?

Jeanne stripped to her skin, neck and shoulders and chest, still peppered with bruises, fading quickly after she was allowed to use a stimpack for her broken hand. Her hands ran down her sides, feeling stretchmarks and scars--they mapped her body just how she remembered. The fat, the way she looked after having a baby. Every detail perfect. She had new scars, though. Ones that belonged only to  _ her.  _ Her fingers drifted up to trace the raised ridge of scar tissue that ran from temple to the back of her jaw. From the deathclaw’s blow to that power armor, all those months ago. 

_ Her  _ scar, not Sophie’s. 

And the little bruises from the night before the relay. 

Her fingers pressed into one of the marks on her neck, above her collarbone and a little sob wracked her shoulders. She could almost feel Deacon’s lips at her pulse point, how he’d sucked at her skin until she bruised, used his teeth, panting against her neck... She groped blindly for the faucet and managed to turn on the shower. She braced an arm against the bathroom wall, naked as the day she was born.  _ Made _ . Which wasn’t all that long ago, she realized. Four months, maybe. 

They probably had cameras in the bathroom. Watched her every move. She was beyond caring. She jerked back to life, slipping under the near-scalding with a hiss of discomfort, but held herself there through the pain as her skin went from pink to angry red. Hottest water she’d been under since waking up from cryo. Hottest water this body had ever felt. 

Another sob shook her shoulders, and under the cover of water and steam and the noise from the radio, she let herself cry. 

~~~

A gen-2 placed a tray of odd gray mush in front of her, and Jeanne frowned at it. She picked up the spoon and pushed the goo around on her plate. She wanted something solid. Some meat. Some mac n’ cheese. A snack cake. She wanted to have dinner sitting on a crate around a campfire. With Deacon beside her, knees brushing… telling her stupid stories, her telling him about things from the old world, both of them running through the details next op, debating the merits of compartmentalization versus democracy when running something so dysfunctional as organized resistance. 

Instead she got gray mush to eat, and Shaun and Sophie Deckard for company. They sat in Shaun’s quarters, X6 standing guard at the door like a well trained doberman. 

“Your work for the Railroad is no secret,” Shawn said, pushing away his own, hardly touched meal. Solid food, she noted, though the meat was gray-brown and the produce wilted. Apparently only synths got gray-goo nutritional paste. He even had a knife and a fork crossed neaty on his plate. “You must have some interesting things to tell us. Mother has convinced me you’ll share willingly, that we won’t have to extract anything from your mind.” 

Jeanne’s lip curled in dismissal, hiding the creep of revulsion that slithered down in her gut. Everything here was a test. A reminder that her mind and her body were not her own. Her  _ experiences _ were not even her own. Every step she took since the vault served as a bit of data for Sophie Deckard’s grand experiment. Even  _ if _ Sophie was keeping them from running medical exams. For now. 

A glance at Sophie showed her that the woman was staring, hard eyed and haughty. Jeanne watched her uneasily, wondering at the change she’d made between sad-eyed apologist that had sat on the other side of the glass from Jeanne when she’d come alive again on an Institute gurney, and distant matriarch who sat having dinner with her son and her… her double.

“The Railroad is on its last legs,” Jeanne huffed in dismissal. It’s what Deacon had said to her when they’d first teamed up. At the time she’d thought he was garnering her sympathy, trying to get her invested. Now, she realized, he’d been telling the truth. Funny how it kept coming back to him and how much truth was buried in his bullshit. And how much she’d resented him him at first, him and his obtuse, pedantic lessons. And how much she now drew on them. On him, using the layers he’d taught her to build. Not force but flow. Layers of bullshit built on real greif and horror, all the way down so they couldn’t see the core of her own truth and conviction. Let them see her as something they programed. Something they owned and controlled. And when the time came, she would slip through their fingers like a ghost. 

“And yet they are still our enemy,” Shaun said, his voice measured. This man was nothing like what she imagined her son--Sophie Deckard’s son--might grow up to. Placid, self assured to the point of blithe arrogance. Only the touch of melancholy about him didn’t surprise Jeanne. That he certainly got from her--from Sophie. 

“I used them to get here, that’s all. The didn’t tell me anything.” She held Shaun’s gaze for a moment to sell the lie and then dropped her eyes to the gray mush on her plate. She couldn’t look at him. Saw an echo of Nate there, in his green-hazel eyes and his long nose, his high forehead and receding hairline. 

“How do they operate? Where can we find them?” Shaun shifted in the corner of her eye. Looking like the ghosted, not-her’s memory of her dead husband.  

She blinked, tears pricking her eyes. “ _ Pardon. _ ” she whispered, and glanced up at Shawn from beneath wet lashes. “It’s just… you look so much like Nate. It’s hard to talk to you.” Defer. Derail. Make him uneasy. Her son. She remembered giving birth to him. Make him as unsettled by who she was… as unsettled as  _ she  _ was by it. 

Shaun frowned at her as if trying to figure out how genuine she was being. She met his eyes, hers prickling with unshed tears. If Jeanne wasn’t sure if the emotion stirring in her chest was real or not, there was no way  _ he  _ would be able to tell. 

He blinked those old, crow’s feet-lined eyes and his face softened a degree and he turned to Sophie. “Mother?”

Sophie nodded. “Perhaps it’s best if I speak with S1-00 alone.” She stared at her son for a long moment and Jeanne stared at them like she was watching a television drama of a life she could have lived. Herself, her son. All refracted into a multitude of possibilities. And glass. Not a cage. A shield between herself and this other reality she would never be a part of.

Would never chose to be a part of.

Shaun nodded and stood. There was a slowness to his movements and Jeanne couldn’t tell if it was her own perceptions that exaggerated the moment or if he moved like he ached, was in pain or bone-weary. Something was wrong with him. 

A silence filled the room in his absence, and Jeanne dragged her eyes towards Sophie. Looking at her felt like probing a loose tooth or picking at a scab. A hypnotic, morbid satisfaction she couldn’t quite resist.

_ “I want to see him,”  _ Jeanne said.

Sophie inclined her head.  _ “Have you asked yourself who he will be to you? Your son? Another synth for you to rescue? A complication?” _

Jeanne set her jaw against the brace of questions.  _ “I’ve asked myself what you’ll allow him to be.” _

Sophie smiled at her inclined her head slightly as if to acknowledge her insight. The praise made Jeanne's stomach lurch. It felt like she was doing something right, living Sophie’s life the way she’d want it to be lived. As clever and fierce as her memories told her she should be. 

Jeanne shook off the faint glow of pride. Looked down at the table with a frown. The knife still sat on Shaun’s plate and her fingers twitched, screaming for a weapon. She could seize the steak knife, leap across the table and gut Sophie Deckard through. Turn on X6-88, try to disarm him. She’d killed a Courser before. But what then? She had no way to teleport out. No next step. She could take Sophie hostage, demand to be freed or she’d kill the old woman. She could probably kill her with her bare hands, Sophie was so frail and shrunken. Her hands convulsed--

“ _ There are better ways than fighting,”  _ she said. “ _ I’ll tell him you know nothing of the Railroad.” _

Jeanne blinked at the sound of her voice, the french stabbing her in the heart, making her feel like  _ home, _ and tore her eyes away from the knife. Be a good synth. Comply. Learn. Watch. Ask what careful questions she could. 

_ “You don’t care about the Railroad, then?”  _

_ “They are irrelevant.”  _ Sophie stared at Jeanne for a long moment and shook her silvery head.  _ “Right now, I’m concerned about you. What you want.” _

_ “I want to see my son.”  _

And she wanted to find Patriot. And she wanted to get out. Find Deacon. Go… home. 

~~~

“Hi,” she said. Seated on the floor in the glass-walled room that was apparently hers now. Sophie had provided her with a pile of comic books, and a bear, offerings suitable for a 

The boy stepped forward, looking around the room and then at Jeanne. they didn’t shut the door behind him. X6-88 stood guard next to Sophie Deckard. A temptation, that open door. Use the boy as a distraction, and run. Where… she had nowhere to go. 

“Hello,” he said. His knees bent and he folded down on the floor in front of her. “Father and Sophie told me you wanted to meet me.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Shaun nodded, watching her uncertainty. “You’re Designation S1-00. You’re special, like me.” 

Jeanne laughed a little, a lump in her throat as she stared at the boy. Special. Like him. Her son, and not her son. Just as she was Jeanne, and not Jeanne. Family, and not. 

And the lump in her throat grew, and she shuddered. Not her son. Nothing was her’s. Sophie’s presence loomed beyond the glass. Such a tiny old woman, radiating power, secret plans. Like a spider at the center of a web Jeanne found herself stuck to, tangled in, each move wrapping her tighter. 

“Shaun… I’m glad you came to visit. I have--”

“My designation is S9-23,” he answered, staring at her with those hazel eyes that took her back. To Nate. What would he think, if he were here? Would he still love her? If she was a synth. Would Shaun be their child? 

S9-23. Not Shaun. They wouldn’t even give her that. The realization slammed her into the wall that served as the negation of her identity, built brick by brick by the Institute. What every synth must feel, when they had to choose if they wanted to wipe their minds. When they realized the life they’d been given was not their own. 

Dazed, Jeanne blinked at the child who was not her’s. She wanted to pull him into a hug, hold him, even though he wasn’t a baby like every instinct in her told her he should be, but a ten year old boy. Seemed to be a ten year old boy. 

“I have some comics for you,” she said. What could she say to a child?  _ I’m your mother? But not. You don’t have a mother. We are synths. We don’t have mothers.  _

She looked up at Sophie Deckard, who watched with a soft look on her face. The look someone got when watching old home movies, soft and curious, like she knew what was going to happen but not how she would feel about it. Tender, or sad, or happy. 

“I’ve read that one,” Shaun said, flipping through a  _ Grognak  _ comic, unconcerned about the eyes that watched them beyond the glass. His eyes fell on an issue of  _ The Unstopables _ , and his face lit up. “This one’s good!” 

Had he already read these comics, or was that just a memory they’d given him, too? Jeanne swallows hard against the lump in her throat. “I haven’t--” she clears her throat and Shaun looks up at her, brows drawn down, searching her face. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. Eyes too serious to be a child’s. Or maybe not. Children saw more than adults gave them credit for. Saw more than they ever should of horrors. She’d cared for many of them, when she’d worked in the Kensington market clinic and in the east end Toronto squats. Treated malnourishment mostly. Some psychological trauma. Gave them whatever supplies she could spare. Tried not to let their tired, over-knowing eyes haunt her nights. 

That wasn’t her either. Sophie. It was always Sophie.

She nodded at Shaun--at S9-23--and managed a smile. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. His face clouded with doubt and she shugged herself into a broader smile, looking down at the comic. “I haven’t read this one yet. Will you read it to me?”

The worry cleared in an instant and Shaun’s eyes became that of a child’s again. Not shy, this one. She wouldn’t have expected him to be, if Sophie Deckard had any say in his design. If she made him like Nate. Because Jeanne had never wanted Shaun to grow up like her. Proud and bitter, scared to stop fighting, to let anyone near her. He should be like Nate. 

And he was, in a way. Smiling as he settled next to her, flopping over on his stomach. He started to read. Even spouted off a faux-deep announcer voice like they did on the old Silver Shroud radio shows.

“ _ The Mistress of Mystery, ensnared in espionage to expose events especially egreg-egregi-”  _ Shaun pauses, sounding out the word. “ _ \--egregious?” _

Jeanne smiled. “Yes,” she said, and he sounds out the word again. “Do you know what it means?”

He shook his head. 

“What do you think?” 

“It’s secrets?”

Jeanne smiled wider. “Secrets  _ can  _ be egregious. Egregious means something ‘especially bad.’ So ‘egregious secrets,’ what would that mean?” 

“Very bad secrets. Secrets that can hurt people? That are evil.”

“That’s right.” Shaun’s own smile flickered and turned back to reading a frown of concentration, and Jeanne looked up to stare at Sophie as she watched them. Their eyes met as Shaun read on and Jeanne’s jaw set, her head tilting to the side as the little flame of anger fanned hotter. Her son. Not her son. But a boy. Not an experiment, or a test, but a child, learning and growing. And it could all be taken away, in an instant. If Shaun or Sophie or any other scientist decided that S9-23’s shell was better suited to another purpose. Sophie blinked slowly, a small, knowing smile playing across her features as Jeanne’s own expression hardened into a challenge, her chin raising, her eyes burning. 

_ “ _ Uh…  _ The Mistress of Mystery...engaged in espionage to expose events especially… egregious, has discovered the dastardly Dr. Brainwash and his De-Capitalists’ plans to purge America of patriot--patriotism…” _

Shaun stumbled over the word. Patriot. The person she was supposed to find. Her one possible ally here. Sophie smiled. And a realization raing in Jeanne’s mind, the implications reverberating back, all the way back to the tape. Saint 2.0. All the roads she’d walked to get her, every step guided by an invisible hand. Past the Vault, the war. Through memories that were not hers. Fighting, always fighting. Scheming.   
  


 

Jeanne's glare softened into a look of surprise.  blinked slowly at Sophie, her glare softening into a look of surprise. Patriot… the sound of the word sent time lurching to a halt as Jeanne stared through the glass. Patriot. The person she’d been told to make contact with. The word suspended time.

_ “Can our heroine survive her harrowing escape and get word to the rest of the Unstopables in time?”  _ Shaun’s voice rushed on, not pausing, blissfully unaware of the staring contest between the old Saint, and the new Fixer. “ _ Can the Silver Shroud suss out her secret signals? Or will Dr. Brainwash and his De-Capitalists get a-head?” _

It had been there the whole time, right in front of her. Waiting for her to break free of the shock long enough to see it. It was almost embarrassing how long it took Jeanne to discover what she’d needed to know. Her ticket to freedom. Her answers. The one thing that would make what Jeanne knew about her own and Sophie Deckard’s shared past make sense.

She took a shaky breath as Shaun turned the page and fell silent to study the pictures.

“ _ Patriot?”  _ Jeanne mouthed silently. Her eyes full of questions. 

For a moment, the woman on the other side of the glass held completely still, like she couldn’t read the single word on Jeanne’s lips. And then Sophie Deckard smiled and inclined her head.


	29. Double Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update! 
> 
> CW for mention of suicidal ideation, lots of death talk. idk it's angst city over here.

Deacon

 

Some people had causes they were willing to die for.

Glory would throw herself in front of a bullet without a thought, if she thought it would save a synth. Dez would chose to sacrifice herself one day, and it would be staggering noble. The _most_ noble death. The noblest. Tom would _literally_ die for science. Almost had pretty much weekly, for years now. Drummer would die for his friends. His family. The Railroad. Just on principle. Because that’s the kind of guy he was.

An agent didn’t ruin their life working for the Railroad just to get cold feet when death started breathing down their neck.

And then there was Deacon. Deacon and his eccentric little life philosophy, which was to not die.

He’d like to think it was because deep down he knew no one else could do his job. That if he died, the Railroad would die with him. That he wanted to be the last one standing. Over and over, the only one who made it out alive, decimated HQ after decimated HQ. Pretty impressive record, honestly.

And there wouldn’t be any glory in it if-- _when_ \--he died. Hopefully no one would even know he’d finally bit it. He’d just stop showing up like the bad penny he was, and Glory would cross his name off the chalkboard in HQ and they’d find a new superspy. He should have spread the rumor that he was thinking of retiring somewhere exotic. Like Greenland.

And Deacon knew the last few moments before lights out wouldn’t be filled with a sense of righteousness. No. He’d leave that to Glory and Dez. No, his last would be filled with knowing that there was _nothing_ in this life that he could have done to make up for what he _didn’t_ do. That he didn’t save Barbara. That he didn’t _try._

If he died, that meant he’d stopped trying. ‘Cause was dead.

So he didn’t want to die.

Particularly not by teleporting his sorry old ass into hell itself.

So.

_Think…_

No message. Not even a code.

Just a map, and a coat, and a gun.

 _Think… This is your job…_ _Do your fucking job._

From his hunched over position on a chair in wreckage of old HQ, Deacon flipped through the pip-boy for the hundred-and-first time, looking for something, anything that might tell him what his next move should be. What Jeanne wanted him to do. Or _whoever_ sent that special delivery via escaped synth wanted him to do.

Although… he was pretty sure he knew. It was just how he was going to _do_ what they wanted without dying.

And he was running out of time to figure it out. Glory would arrive in a matter of hours, and he needed to make a choice. An assumption. A blind stab in the dark while handcuffed, ears stuffed with cotton. All senses muffled.

For a few reasons. Because he wanted to get Fixer back. Unharmed. No Railroad agent was so singularly important. She was pre war, and there was some conspiracy surrounding her that was probably important. Really important. And if Deacon didn’t get her back… he wouldn’t...

And then there was the other piece, the piece where he didn’t want to die. Because maybe it was a trap. All in vain.

Maybe Fixer was behind it all, anyway. Deep cover. Sleeper agent. A synth sent to compromise the Railroad’s longest-standing member. It would makes sense. She really was perfect, in a lot of ways. All the characteristics of an ideal partner. Experienced, capable, determined, laughed at his jokes. Loyal.

Pretty. Absolutely gorgeous.

Deacon shoved the thought away and stood up from the creaky chair so fast it rocked back on its legs and tipped to the floor with a clatter.

He paced HQ the long way, from the firing range with its toppled, bullet riddled targets, all the way to the hall where a few mattresses leaned up against the wall, out of the way. He kicked one of them, his foot rebounding against the springs and the mattress topped forward so he had to jump back as it landed in a puff of dust. He turned from the garbage strewn hall and kicked his feet all the way to the bullpen. Where they’d kept PAM, and the report terminal. Where he and Glory got into their finest arguments. Nothing remained of the supplies. Terminal gone. Only a pile of ash and the acrid smell of a fire remained. They used the bullpen as a firepit to dispose of paper reports and notes, anything that could get lost on the way, or easily get slipped into a pocket...

If Fixer wasn’t the one who’d sent her gear back, and she wasn’t some sort of super-genius sleeper-agent. Then what was the game?

And who was playing?

Patriot, obviously. _Saint 2.0_ . _That_ was the conspiracy, right there.

The look on her face, when she’d read the tape. That was either a sleeper agent reading a code like in a bad spy comic, or she’d been… afraid.

She’d been afraid.

That’s what he was gonna go with.

So. It could be Fixer sending her stuff back as a contingency. Because she was planning to get the hell outta there with her answers. Or without them. But probably with them, knowing her.

Or because she wasn’t coming back and… wanted to fuck with him. No, he’d already crossed that off the list of things he was willing to believe.

Okay. So.

He found himself staring blankly at Tinker Tom’s old workbench. Covered in acid burns and scorch marks and pen scribblings. Tom’s work area looked like Deacon’s brain felt. Mad detritus, picked over and full of nonsense and the ghost conspiracies, each more unhinged than the last.

_Think…_

Someone wanted him to go to the Institute. Well, not _him_. In particular. Hopefully.

If it was so easy to send out a teleport signal, then why hadn’t Patriot done so before now? Would have been… Deacon took a deep breath. Would have been really fucking useful any time between now and, oh say _, twenty fucking years ago_.

So that begs the question. Why now?

Because Fixer, that’s why. Pre-war key to the Institute. If only Deacon could figure out the lock. How she fit.

Okay, fine. Glory might be right. He might be compromised.

But he was going to do it. He’d already made the assumptions. He was already compromised. Now he’d see it through.

He’d need to be gone by the time Glory got there. If he saw her, she’d bully him into telling her his plan. What was on the pip-boy. Deacon was tired of lying. Didn’t know if he had it in him at the moment. But he needed her help. It wasn’t fair to have her manage the grunt work without knowing what the op was. How she hated compartmentalization. But that was agent life. You did what you were told. Even if they were operating way, _way_ outside of standard procedure. Even if Dez was going to murder them, after.

Glory was a good kid. Worked hard. Took no shit. Especially not _his_ shit. He’d make it up to her.

Deacon grabbed his bag and sank down on the floor, emptied everything and started fresh. A change of costume for himself, and a change of clothes for Fixer. Food, purified water. His heart skipped a beat when he picked up her medkit, the red cross faded on the front, staring at him acusingling. He set it aside and repacked her coat, folding it around Deliverer. Put her medkit on top and zipped up the bag. Strapped her rifle to the back and hefted it.

Now he needed a disguise.

His stash of costume changes was right where he left it, a hole in the wall of the long hallway, hidden by loose bricks. No one had bothered to take his stuff with them. He dug through the piles of books and clothes until he found what he was looking for, way at the back: the white and gray jumpsuit with the red latex arms. An escaped synth--Timothy, his name was--had given it away when Boxer brought him to Tichon. Deacon had never had the occasion to wear it. Until now.

He left Glory op instructions in Heavy cipher. Pinned it to the bag and left it in the center of the room where she couldn’t miss it.

And if she wouldn’t, or she couldn’t… Well, he and Fixer had managed just fine on their own, so far. Sort of. Except 

~~~  


 

S1-00

They let her see Shaun every day. It helped her count the passage of time. One, two, three days. Assuming they were on a twenty-four hour cycle. It was hard to keep track when the minutes themselves felt like hours, and she was incapable of sleep. Her… _programing_ would not allow it.

Shaun was precocious child, kind and bright and observant. And she didn’t feel like his mother. He had more Nate in him. Better that way.

Between visits with Shaun, more tours, and presumably acute observations by hidden scientists, she lay staring at the ceiling, feeling stretched thin, thoughts viscous and slow like taffy. Sophie had not come to see her since the revelation. Her insides buzzed, until the energy came out in a restless tapping of a foot, fingers drumming on whatever surface they happen to rest upon. She realized she’d been grinding her teeth only when she found her jaw aching. She chewed her lips till they bled.

Escape plans helped pass the time. Dozens of daydreams. Kill Sophie. Take her hostage. Get a gun and blast her way out. Go get Shaun--little Shaun--and take control of the teleporter. Incite a synth riot. Persuade X6 that synth liberation was… an option.  

At least she didn’t want to die. No, she was much too angry now. Not like the last time she’d been in solitary, ten years ago. Two-hundred-and-twenty years ago. Her and Sophie. Sophie, who had been Saint, who was Jeanne. Who was now her. Who only remembered being there. Only remembered planning to take her own life before her tormentors could break her.

She tasted blood, released her tongue from between her teeth. Maybe it was better if she thought of herself as Fixer. From now on. For now.

She couldn't kill Sophie. Sophie was Patriot. Apparently. And it was that nugget of possibility that kept her sane. At least she thought she was sane. There was still the question of whether or not any of this was actually real.

As if the thought summoned her, the doors facing her glass wall opened. The man--perhaps he was a synth--who wheeled Sophie Deckard into the glass-walled room in a wheelchair reminded her of an orderly, dressed in the sterile white and gray Institute uniform. He was fair skinned, bald, with kind, blue eyes. Her heart leapt as her fingers ceased their drumming and she jumped to her feet. Froze. Impossible. She studied him and then the bright hope in her chest burst. The orderly looked like Deacon. Just a little. Less so now that she didn’t let desperation blind her. He had longer features, softer and more plain… Stupid girl.

Fixer huffed and turned her attention to Sophie.

Fixer had never seen her in a wheelchair before. This one was chrome and white cushioned, and even though it was not large, it seemed to swallow her up, her knees hardly coming to the edge, her feet propped up on padded foot rests. Of course, at ninety-three there were a whole host of things that could take Sophie off her feet. Fatigue, arthritis, low blood pressure, vertigo, to name a few.

Fixer grabbed a nearby, heavy-framed chair and dragged it across the floor. The legs screeched on the linoleum, knife sharp and brittle, leaving streaks of black, and Fixer took some small pleasure in the act of defiance, however pathetic it was.

“Thank you, Z1,” said Sophie, dismissing him with a wave. He bowed and backed out of the room like a servant, casting a small glance at Fixer before the doors closed on him with a sigh.

Fixer let the front legs of the chair fall to the ground with a bang and dropped into the seat. She raised her eyes and her gaze snagged on Sophie’s folded papery hands. She looked like a withered leaf. Crumpled parchment. Once breath and she would float away, white hair a nimbus around her lined face. It was impossible not to stare. Like walking past a storefront window and glancing at her reflection simply because it was there. Perhaps a touch of--not vanity--ego. And a some definite morbid fascination.  She resisted the urge to look down at her own hands to see if they would be her own or if they would covered in lines and liver spots, afraid to find which reality was more real. A flicker of some divergent life, a person she could have been. Her mirror-self. Except that she--Jeanne was the reflection. No, _Fixer_. Fixer was the reflection. Not Jeanne. Not right now.

 _“When am I getting out?”_ French, always french.

Sophie stared at her with the faraway look of someone not truly listening. Perhaps having her own version of the conversation in her head.

 _“You and I…”_ she said at last, _“We have work to do.”_ She blinked and her eyes snapped back into focus. Locked on Fixer’s from behind the glass.

Fixer tapped her foot on the floor, leaned forward and rapped on the glass with her knuckles. It made a hollow, sharp sound. She wondered if she could throw the chair at it, shatter the glass. _“And how am I supposed to_ work _, trapped behind this?”_

 _“You’re creating waves just being here. Important waves.”_ Sophie sighed and shook her head, her once again growing distant. _“Of all the things I was afraid of...:”_ Of all the reasons I kept Shaun here…” She faltered and her face pinched with sorrow. _“He’s very ill. Dying.”_

Fixer’s foot stopped tapping. There was no question about who ‘he’ was.

Her vision tunneled down, the floor alarmingly far away. _Dying… my son is… not my son..._

 _“Did you hear me, S1-00?...”_ A pause. _“Jeanne.”_

Their shared name, so hard on the heels of the designation they’d given her, snapped Fixer back into reality. She took a shuddering breath. Shaun was… A hollow place inside of her suddenly felt full and achy.

She licked her lips, raw and chapped. Her body was adjusting poorly to the scrubbed, painfully dry air. _“What’s wrong with him?”_

Sophie shook her head. _“Cancer.”_

Fixer snorted at the thought. Of all things. His frailty made sense. Chemotherapy? Some new treatment? Did people really still die of cancer? No one talked about it on the surface. People must have adapted, developed a resistance to radiation. And they took precautions against radiation, as normal as eating, or using the bathroom. And sometimes they went ghoul.

Had the Institute not worked on some kind of cure?

 _“Mankind redefined, my ass.”_ She shook her head. _“No cure? The great and powerful Institute brought low by cancer?”_

_“The irony has not been lost on me._ _All those years keeping him away from the surface-- Well. I gambled, out of fear. And like most things done--or not done--because of fear, I lost. There’s no use in thinking of what could have been. What I must do is think of what comes next. You.”_

The full feeling in Fixer’s chest grew painfully tight. She opened her mouth, and then closed it slowly. Careful…

Sophie shook her head. _“I want you to take his place.”_

Fixer had to fight to keep her jaw from dropping again. _“Are you proposing a coup?”_

Sophie laughed, her smile delighted. Something fierce and wild shown there, reckless. “ _Ouis_ ,” she said. _“One of my options. I can’t simply let you go, as much as you deserve freedom. They won’t let you walk. You’d have to escape.”_ Her eyes glittered for a moment, and Fixer wondered if perhaps she couldn’t be persuaded to facilitate such a thing. “Besides, who better to succeed my son than--”

Fixer echoed her smile with a faint one of her own, her disdain pricking. _“Than_ you _. Your hubris is astounding.”_

 _“It always has been. Pride. But am I wrong?”_ Sophie’s smile pulled wider. To anyone else it may have looked like arrogance, but to Fixer. She knew that trick… the posturing. A front. To hide her fear. _“You might even be better.”_

Despite the absurdity off the offer, her gut lurched, reaching out to grab at the opportunity. _Yes_ . If not for actual takeover, than for deep recon. Sabotage. The perfect opportunity to take them down from the inside. The idea was more than tempting. Dez would jump at the chance. Deacon would have collapsed on the floor in laughter at how easy it was. How _easy_? As if any of this was a leisurely walk along the Freedom Trail. Thought that walk had become a bit more dangerous over the past few hundred years. She could hear the thought in his voice. Missed the crooked lift at the corner of his mouth he’d have as he said it. And then he’d take a few steps back. Look at the big picture. What was the setup? The hook. What was the catch?

The catch, as far as Fixer could see, was what they’d used to lure her here. _“You’re not wrong. What about Shaun. The child?_ ” Fixer asked.

_“He’s under my protection. He is my son too, after a fashion. Grandson, perhaps.”_

Fixer didn’t buy it, but she had time now, to negotiate. _“Why now? All these years? Why_ _Patriote?_ _”_

Sophie’s smile turned sad. _“I’ve told you. Everything I’ve said is true. I made the wrong choices. Now is about doing what I can, though it’s too late for me, at least. And before… I didn’t have you.”_

Fixer swallowed hard. A question that hadn’t really surfaced before bubbled up. She’d been too overwhelmed, too tired to think about Nate. Always later, for Nate. It wasn’t fair to him. Made it wonder if she ever really loved him, the way he deserved to be loved. He’d saved her. Taken her away from the horrors in Toronto, the last throes of a failed resistance. Complete Annexation. To a new sort of horror, mundane and glossy American life untouched by the decaying society just outside of Sanctuary's white picket fences. Never really talked about it. She’d owed him... Not now, Nate. Always later. And now… he wasn’t even hers.

Maybe it was better that way.

Fixer leaned forward so her breath misted faintly against the glass. _“Nate’s body was in the vault when I woke up.”_

Sophie sat up a little straighter, staring at Fixer for a long moment, and then dropped her eyes. Took a deep, sad breath. _“He’s been there since they took us. Shaun and I.”_ She shook her head. _“They wanted to…”_ The words caught in her throat and it struck Fixer how very old the woman before her was. How much she had endured. How many choices had been taken from her. How many decisions she’d refused to make. _“They wanted to keep him preserved for his DNA.”_

 _The spare…_ That’s what Kellogg had said. If any of those memories were true.

Fixer sat back in her chair, thinking about the body down in the vault. Hole in his head. The way her lungs had felt like they were collapsing, full of fluid as she pressed herself against his frozen corpse, whispering promises that she’d find Shaun. And it dawned on her, that she’d never pressed her body against Nate’s except that one time. Not her _physical_ body. _This_ body. Just the memory of it. It wasn’t hers, the first time they’d kissed, on the night he’d walked her home from the clinic. Not when they’d first had sex, on a dingy mattress in apartment on Bloor.  Not on their wedding night, when she lost herself in his warmth like it was the only thing that mattered.

His wedding ring still wrapped around his finger, the day she’d been set loose on the Commonwealth. She’d entrusted hers to Codsworth. She wondered now if her’s was the original. Sophie didn’t wear a ring.  Had she replaced his for authenticity. Was the Fixe given to Codsworth the original, or a replica?

Sophie had never gone back to bury him. Lay him to rest.

_Not now, Nate._

Was that what he would always be reduced to? A footnote? Something to deal with later? Always later. A pang of understanding struck her and Fixer frowned. They were the same. Same choices, same inclations. Just divergent paths. A second chance. It was maddening, trying to sort out who was who. What belonged to _her._ Fixer.

 _“I’ll hear you out,”_ Fixer said at last. _“But I want a guarantee. Shaun is untouched. No more messing in his brain. And I want system access. Data. Anything you can give me. And I want to walk around without a fucking guard.”_

Sophie smiled and shook her head. _“We always did sell ourselves short. I can give you so much more.”_

Of course, if this was real, she could have it all. Do whatever she wanted. That was the promise of power, though. The reality of it was often quite different.

Fixer nodded, pressing her lips into a line. It felt like a deal with the devil. Except the devil was her mirror self. And in the eyes of the Commonwealth, they would both be boogeymen. The creator and her synthetic monster. At least the Railroad would protect Fixer fully now. If she was inclined  to tell them. That she was… what she was. If she ever got out. And Deacon… _If_ he didn’t know about her… situation… Well, he’d been hesitant to get closer to her before. She couldn’t imagine how they’d  be able to build anything now. Not after what he’d told her about Barbara.

And that should hurt. Probably did hurt, way down at the core below all her other hurts. But it was a funny, distant pain, a pain she’d been expecting. Fixer and Deacon, a most unlikely pair. It was never going to work anyway.

Sophie’s smile grew serene. _“Things are in motion,”_ she said. _“I just need to see which plan is going to fall into place fir--”_

The low wail of a klaxon alarm cut her short. Fixer jumped and sprung to her feet. As if there was something she needed to fight.

Sophie’s smile broadened. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, and wheeled herself to the door. “I think a contingency plan has arrived.”

~~~

 

Deacon

The sky curled in on itself, turning a dull steel gray that threatened more rain but didn’t follow through. A chill in the air made Deacon’s breath mist faintly as he slid through the shadows of the CIT ruins, getting closer and closer to… what? His doom? The weather was certainly obliging, matching his mood like he was the salwart heroine in some Brontë nove, who’s bleak surroundings lent some verisimilitude to her grim, determined interior.

Perhaps he was being touch dramatic, but he’d earned the right, hadn’t he? Put in his time. Paid his dues.

And didn’t he have his own, oddly byronic hero to rescue?

Deacon found the railsign right where he knew it would be, and picked the lock to the little hidey-hole garage he and Fixer had crashed at the day they fought the Courser. The door swung open with a screech of hinges that made Deacon wince as he slipped inside.  It looked untouched. No sign of entry, looked just as they had left it. A place to rest. Restock. Heal. Smelled like engine grease and dust. Hardly any light filtering through the dirty paines of glass above the door.

First time he and Fixer had shared a bed, right here. Deacon shoved the thought aside, not bothering to glance at the mattress, and branded himself a sentimental fool. No time to think about where _that_ road had lead them.

Maybe later, once he got Fixer back.

If she _wanted_ to come back.

He shook himself, and got down to it. Brass tacks. End of the line. Mouth of hell. Palms sweaty, fingers numb, he shrugged out of his raider leathers and stepped into the confines of the weird, rubber-and-canvas Institute jumpsuit. He let the garment hang around his waist as he looked down at the bulge in his pants. An odd, distant thrill of fear he hadn’t felt since the night Fixer had kissed him in the Rexford struck him now. It all seemed so simple now. That night he’d only wondered how a pre-war lady might take to fucking a guy-ish person with an opt-in dick. Back then he didn’t think the anxiety had any bearing on reality because why would she want to crawl in bed with _him_ , of all people? But it had turned out not to be an issue. Because she did apparently. Want him.

But what about the Institute? Synths never talked about their gender. They just lived in whatever bodies and memories they were given. So binary, many of them. Glory had egg-vibes. Ready to hatch into full on “fuck gender” crusader, the way she crusaded against everything else. They’d never talked about it. So many things Deacon never talked about with her. Another mistake.

Didn’t matter. What mattered was that if the Institute had their prejudices, and they figured Deacon out, he could be in trouble. Not that he wasn’t already going to be in trouble just by being there. No use worrying about little details like a soft pack if the whole damn thing was a mistake. He would keep with business as usual, then. He heaved a sigh and shrugged his arms into the top of the  jumpsuit.

No wig. So, bald and… what was he going to do about his sunglasses? Too noticeable. Might be odd, not having something on his face. He should work on that, try letting go of the damn things once in a while. He could get eyeglasses. Did synths wear glasses? Maybe he had light sensitivity. That was a good cover. He kept them on. Could always take them off if it was too obvious. And the pip-boy…. No avoiding bringing it along.

Besides, Fixer knew better than to keep sensitive information on a portable computer.

Deacon slipped back into the steely twilight and locked the door, the Institute bag that had contained Fixer’s coat and gun over one shoulder. All that lived in there now was a change of clothes, his wig, and the pip-boy.

Now he stood in the center of an ancient courtyard, once-proud buildings crumbling around him. The world seemed stretched and unreal and his body felt oddly transparent as he raised his wrist and pulled up the map on the little pip-boy screen. He stood right over the marker. Not going far, then. Just a few-hundred feet below ground. With that new perspective, ground level now felt like standing at a great height. A sheen of cold sweat sprung up on his forehead and he found a tumble of rubble to fix his eyes on, keep himself steady as he gathered his thoughts and fears, and ejected them one by one. Emptied himself of desire or any sort of presumptive persona. No funny guy. Blank slate. Amorphous blob. A nobody. Who Deacon _ought_ to be. He’d been having a hard time being a nobody lately.

Breathe. He dropped his eyes to the pip-boy, the little target cursor blinking invitingly up at him. And he hit the command button.

And nothing happened. Deacon’s lungs started to burn with the breath he couldn’t exhale. And then, just as he started to slump a tingle started deep in his bones. A static charge rippled over his skin. Blue light flared, and swallowed him, only his sunglasses keeping him from being blinded. His body stretched, twisted into impossible shapes, like he was dissolving into some sort of slipstream. _Up_ and _down_ , simultaneously.

And then he was elsewhere. A brief lurch of nausea as his vision cleared. A room. Blinking consoles. Cleaner than your average shithole. Not a shithole at all, except you know, morally. Morally a shithole.

“M2-89,” a voice said. Deacon suppressed a jump as his vision danced with floaters. The voice belonged to a woman standing at a large console, like all the other ones in the… teleporter room. Thing.

Synth. He was a synth now? _M2-89_. The designation burned into his mind. Too slick, for him to be able to walk right in and fit. Had to be a pre-designed cover-- Right? Right. He’d roll with it. Sort out the rest later.

“You were not scheduled to return for another day. Was there an issue with the salvage mission?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Deacon said, keeping his posture stiff and his eyes straight ahead. Just like a good synth. “Raiders.” Always a good scapegoat. “They invaded the location and I had to abandon the mission.”

“Very well. Why are you wearing glasses?”

“My eyes, ma’am. Flashbang grenade.”

“See Doctor Volkert on your way back to quarters.” She looked him over for a long moment. “And next time--” a weary wryness leaked into her voice. “Wear the correct color jumpsuit. Go.”

Deacon went. Salvage. A designation. Like he’d been here all his life. His synth life. Too slick.

The next challenge was to pretend he’d seen the complex before. Like he’d been born there. He strode down the hall and acted like he’d taken the strange, slow elevator down and down over and over again, not gaping. Looking content and vacant. Pretend that when the atrium burst into view, five floors up that it didn’t send a wave of vertigo through him when he forced himself to look. White space, open, bright. Air, clean, to the point of burning his nose. _Trees._ With _leaves._ A fucking… water feature… babbling brook… thing.

Hell, painted up all pretty with cracks at the seams all bleeding its true colors of… evil. Whatever color evil was. Right now, evil looked like sterile tranquility. Bright whites, bleeding warm light.

He unbuckled the pip-boy from his arm and tucked it into his bag as the elevator brought him down into the main floor. Colored lines seemed to indicate directions. He would have to avoid seeing the doctor. And find maintenance. And the synth quarters. A Gen-1 strode up to him and froze. Deacon stopped dead as well as the robot seemed to study him and then beeped his identity as recognized and passed on. Like Deacon belonged there. For whatever reason that was. Could be whoever had set up the pip-boy with a teleporter had also given it some kind of fake synth designation. Or Deacon really was…

Anyway. His heart hammered in his chest at the Gen-1 passed him by.

He took a deep breath. Two priorities. Maintain his miraculous cover, and find Fixer. Secondary goals, find Patriot. Or should that be a primary goal? He was _here_. Could he do both? Gather as much intel as he could.

But Fixer… Eye on the prize, as it were. Besides, she _must_ be collecting intel. His job was to get the intel, and _her_ out.

Deacon set his jaw and picked a random colored line to follow. Red.  

And he wandered. No one paid him any mind. Other people, presumably synths, mopped floors and worked on electrical arrays cleverly hidden behind white tile walls. The infamous Synth Retention Bureau, Bio Science, Robotics, Advanced Science. Living quarters on the upper floors.

There were children here. Deacon scanned their faces, looking for any trace of Fixer there, wondering if one of them could be Shaun. He’d have to be white, fair skinned, probably with brown or black hair. Maybe freckles. And there was no sign of her in any of their faces. No sign of her anywhere that he seemed to have access to.

Eventually he did find a door that opened to him. Beyond laid an array of barracks, bunk beds and living quarters for a workforce. A bunch of slaves. Hundreds of them. Rooms and rooms of them. An entire, separate compound. Not as bright and airy as the atrium and the rooms on the upper floors. No privacy. But who needed privacy when you weren’t really a person, right?

Deacon started to sweat as he wandered the monotonous rows of bed. He needed an ally. A friend.

And as if the thought had summoned it, a voice called out. “M2-89?”

Deacon turned around slowly, his spine tingling. Cool… be cool. Synth cool. “Yes?” he said.

A man stood in front of him, middle aged, his brown hair close cropped. Same bland jumpsuit as Deacon. “Fillmore has asked me to show you an issue we’re having with some piping. Follow me.”

So he was a plumber now? Cool. Deacon nodded, eyes wide behind his glasses. He was in it now. Literally working for the Institute. Maybe he could sabotage their plumbing system… yeah. A little flood of gray water would show them…Who said revolution couldn’t be petty?

The synth lead him down a side corridor and Deacon followed meekly. Like a good worker drone. No questions. No curiosity. No agenda. None at all. Obey. Just like a good synth. Deacon hoped to god or whoever that he wasn’t _actually_ a synth. Not that there was anything _wrong_ with being one. There was just too much other bullshit in his head for him to start questioning his identity. Besides, he doubted it, except for that nagging voice. His memories were too fucking complicated, there was too much in his head for someone to have put it there. But wasn’t that the _point_? Is that how Barbara had felt? That unrealness. Impossibility.

The synth stopped and opened a door along the empty hall and  Deacon forced himself not to hesitate as he stepped past.

The door slid shut with a hiss, and for a long moment a silence ensured.

“I was sure you’d be caught,” the synth said at last. “Contingency plans never carry much hope… Not always as inspiring as the main event.”

“Where’s this pipe?” Deacon asked, looking around as if the synth’s words didn’t register, even though they’d sent his heart racing.

“I’m Z1-14,” the synth went on. “I’m here to help you. Patriot wasn’t sure if you’d come, but...” Z1 smiled. “Here you are.”

“Patriot.” Deacon said. He felt is synth persona slip, and let it, just a little. “So they set up this little chose-your-own adventure. A note would have been nice. Any sense of where I could find our mysterious benefactor?”

Z1 ignored him and fished something from his pocket. Held it out to Deacon. A holotape with a peeling label. _Saint 2.0._ Deacon took it with buzzing fingers, smoothing the label with a thumb. He exhaled hard and it felt like the first breath he’d taken in years. The next inhale more a gasp of anything, choking on the hyper-filtered air that felt impossible to his nose and lungs.

He looked up at the synth. His chest tightened again and Deacon knew before the words rushed out of him that he was going to sound like a hyperventilating idiot.  Yep. All choked up. Fuckin’ sentimental sap. “There was a woman who arrived her, a week and a bit ago. Do you know where I can find her?”

“Yes.” Z1 said with a placid nod. Not an unexpected question, then. “Second level above the Bio Labs.” Z1 studied him for a moment and then held out another strip of plastic. A security card. “She’s currently in _Programing & Testing. _Your cover isn’t going to last once they wrinkle out that M2-98 never existed.”

So he… _wasn’t_ a synth. Getting kinda hard to keep up. “Cool. I dig this double identity stuff. Mind telling me how _they_ think M2-98 exists?”

Z1 smiled, looking pleased with himself. “That pip-boy has an RFID planted in it. But soon as you head to Reprogramming and use that card, any Gen-1 or Gen-2 you encounter will know you aren’t supposed to be there, and will cross check your identity.”

Deacon nodded. It was clever. A bit convoluted for his tates, but when it came to the Institute, what wasn’t?

“Are you armed?”

Deacon shook his head. “It hadn’t really seemed like a good idea, waltzing in with a gun.”

Z1 gestured to a white metal crate. What lay inside made Deacon whistle, long and low. 10mm handguns, a few shotguns, laser rifles. Some close-range weapons too--shock batons and a few knives.  Probably enough to arm fifteen or more people. “You and Patriot aren’t fucking around, huh?”

Z1 shook his head, a small smile pulling up the dour, downturned corners of his mouth. “We take transitions of power very seriously. And this is just the beginning.”  

And that’s when Deacon knew he was in over his head by several hundred feet. “The beginning of _what_?” Z1 cocked his head, studying Deacon for a long moment. “Hey, I’m on your side here,” Deacon continued. This guy needed a fast talker. “Compatriots, comrades in arms. Co-conspirators. Dreamers, doers--”

Z1 set his stance, his expression bland, bordering on amused. This one wasn't going to let slip anything right here and now. “Take what you need and go. You're on borrowed time."

Deacon didn’t need telling twice. He bypassed the firearms and grabbed a batton. More stealthy. Besides he’d always been good at headsmashing, if it came to that. Tended to have more… impact. Heh. He slid the batton up his sleeve and fled. Z1 didn’t follow.

It was for the best. Deacon still had dozens of questions bouncing around in his head. _Is she okay_ ? _Is she hurt? Will she… want to leave?_ Because to someone from before the war, this place probably felt a little less like hell than the world above.

Right. Upstairs, above Robotics. For some reason the thought bothered him as he followed the red line. Everything looked the same, corners and mazes and monotony. Even though the lonolum was absolutely smooth and pristine Deacon felt as if he was navigating over rubble and broken ground, how unsteady the disorientation made him. One step, then another. Pass one person, than another. No alarms. No cover blown. Z1 might be full of shit and now Deacon carried a weapon, an incriminating holotape, and a key card he shouldn't have and he was about to get framed. Not to mention the stashed-away pip-boy and the fact that he was _not a synth._

Yeah. Probably not a synth. He’d sort that out later.

Second floor. Some sort of lab. Synths sat in white pajamas, vacant-eyed and contented. Deacon shoved down the lurch of disgust. M2-89 wouldn’t care. No one stopped him as he passed through the room, still following the red line. It stopped at a door, labeled _Programing & Testing. _ No one noticed the pull of disgust on his face as he read those words. No one looked at him as he tapped the card against the lock. They were all so secure here. Had been for over two centuries. No interlopers. No spies. No reason to suspect that some idiot in sunglasses was about to… do _something._ Hopefully get his partner back.

The door slid shut behind Deacon and he looked around. A hallway. Sliding doors on either side. Some with heavy equipment. Conference rooms. Some with… _people_ . All behind glass. In thin cloth gowns or those white pajamas the synths outside had been wearing. The ones that made Deacon's gorge rise were the ones dressed in wastelander finery. One in a Minutemen uniform. A drifter. A raider. All with vacant eyes. Made him wonder... had Barb been here? Vacat-eyed and waiting to replace the original Barb, or just wait to be programed to be the woman he'd fallen in love with. Programed to fall in love. Barb was a miracle, really.

Nah. No. Nope. Bad timing. He'd deal with the nightmare fuel he was collecting a bit later. Barb was dead, and Fixer was alive, and those were the facts he was working with. But where  _was_ she.

Two Gen-1s patrolled at the far end of the corridor, past room after room of caged synths.

Deacon shifted the batton so it would fall from his sleeve when he loosened the cuff. He scanned the rows of cells, his heart sinking into the pit that used to be his stomach. _Wrong, wrong, wrong._ This was all wrong, just like he’d known it would be topside. No Fixer. And if she was further in...

“Halt,” glitched one of the Gen-1s. Five feet away, and closing. Deacon stopped, took a deep breath as the robot scanned him. “Presence not authorized,” it chirped. “Intruder--”

Deacon lunged forward, the batton dropping into his hand. With a flick it telescoped out and sparked with electricity as he slammed the point into the Gen-1’s neck. The thing hissed and jerked, it’s orb-eyes rolling. The other one backed up and raised it’s laser pistol.

And then the alarm sounded.

Deacon backpedaled, cursing as he took peppering fire from the second synth and the first advanced, jerky and listing sideways.

Deacon grabbed for the failing synth and gave it another jolt of electricity. He hefted the body, the sagging weight dragging at his arms. He shuffled forward, using the dying robot’s body as partial cover as he tried to close with the synth with the gun. The siren wailed, lancing into his brain like a spike. Or maybe that was the laser fire tearing at the exposed half of his body. Usually taking fire didn’t hurt so damn much.

 _No ballistic weave_ , he thought faintly as the live synth backed away and Deacon’s grip started to slip on the dead one. With a heave he shoved it forward so the two crashed together, and then a crack of electricity later, laser synth was down and twitching. Deacon scooped up the pistol. The “t” at the end of the hall loomed a few dozen yards away. _Move it,_ he urged himself. He found himself sprinting, the Institute bag slapping against his hip, pulse throbbing in his ears along with the siren.

Footsteps clattered behind him, joining the cacophony. Voices, synthetic and natural, yelling at him. The usual “stop,” and “halt” and other uncreative, predictable responses to someone sprinting down a hall they shouldn’t be in. And Deacon sprinted, heart thudding.

Shit was going sideways, fast.

Deacon skidded to a stop, hitting the far wall, looking both ways. One way held an opaque door. The other, a long hall. Well, better the hall you know then the door that might hide something even worse than a couple of guards running you down--

He pushed off the wall, ready to bolt down the hallway when the sound of a door sliding open turned his head. An old woman smiled up at him, beckoned him forward with a shaky hand. She sat ensconced in a wheelchair too large for her tiny frame.

“You have the pip-boy?” she asked.

 _Think fast, old timer,_ Deacon urged himself. He studied her for a half a second, and something about her tickled his brain. Possible threat. Her eyes were bright and sharp. Canny, like a predator. He nodded in answer to her question.

The sound of his pursuers clattering down the hall shook him from his assessment. His eyes flicked up, beyond the old woman. All his breath left in a rush, his chest cavity reduced to a vacuum.

Pale-faced, palm flat and bloodless against a wall of glass that bisected the room. Fixer.

She mothed something. His name, the ghost of it leaving her lips. All but the first syllable swallowed by the bleating of the alarm.

“Dee--”

The look on her face was one usually reserved for seeing dead people.

 _Think fast..._ He stumbled through the doors like he’d been pulled on a string. The door hissed closed behind him and he heard a lock engage.

“We have only a few minutes,” he heard the old woman say behind him, and that made Deacon shift his ass to keep her in his paraphiary, though he couldn’t look away from Fixer. Her lips were pale, he could see how cracked and raw they were from here. No obvious signs of injury, though. No bruising or blood. 

“You’re _very_ helpful,” Deacon said to the other woman, his eyes still locked on Fixer. Fixer... hadn’t said a thing but his name. Her eyes brimmed, overbright and wild, and he was suddenly very, very afraid. “You alright, Fix?”

“ _Crisse!_ Do I look all right? _”_ At least she could still be sarcastic. She edged sideways and Deacon mirrored her.

“Stupid question,” he said. Stupid--how could she be all right? In a pretty glass cage. She wore institute pajamas, like some of the others he’d seen passing through. Testing & Reprogramming. His thoughts skipped like a stone over the surface of any deeper understanding.

“Looks like we will go with option two,” the old woman said, addressing Fixer. She had a faint accent, Deacon noted. The same hard o’s and harsh t’s as Fixer.

A chill crawled down Deacon’s spine, making him raise his gun. “I’ve never pointed my gun at an old lady before,” he said. Something unholy slithered in the depths of Deacon’s stomach, stirring for the first time in what felt like eons.

 _Hello,_ it said to him. His jaw clenched. _Remember me?_

“Deacon!” Fixer yelled, her palm slapping against the glass.

His hand shook as the thing raised its head to look at him. _Remember me?_

He held the gun steady, willing away the tremor, the summons. Not the time. He _did_ remember. And he knew with cold certainty that whatever monster that lived deep down inside of him was not going to handle this situation very well.

“There’s no need for weapons here,” the old woman said. Her lips curled into a smile, old scars on her mouth and chin pulling tight. She wheeled slowly past him, and Deacon wasn’t sure where to keep his eyes, but he kept his gun trained on her as she made her slow way across the room. Deliberately slow, he felt.

Someone thudded on the door. “Disengage the lock, immediately!” they commanded. Predictably.

 _God_ , this place was _boring._ Deacon never in a million years guessed at how predictable and mundane the Institute was going to be. Clean, and bright, and full of idiots. That last, at least, he sort of guessed. _He’d_ managed to keep ahead of them all these years, after all.

He didn’t lower the gun, his eyes darting between the woman and Fixer as he took a few steps backwards as the woman reached the panel.

“Let her out,” Deacon said.

“Don’t shoot her.” A pleading note eclipsed the warning in Fixer’s voice. He glanced at her, saw her breath misting on the glass, and the old slumbering thing down in his gut stirred again, tension wending its way up his arm to meet his barely controlled tremors. “She won’t hurt us,” Fixer rushed on,  her voice soft and urgent.

It was _so good_ to hear her voice.

It would be better when it wasn’t muffled by glass.

The old woman hit a few buttons. The locking mechanism hissed, and the glass door slid open. Fixer stood there, fists clenched at her sides, staring at the old woman. Another pound at the door, and she startled, taking a step forward. She glanced at Deacons, eyes hard with a warning, told him _wait_ , as clearly as if she’d said it. So he waited. But he wasn’t dropping his gun for anything. Not for all the cola in Nuka World.

Fixer sank down into a crouch to look the woman in the eyes, coiled and nearly shaking. Like a predator released from a cage. Trying to decide if she would turn on her captor. Her jaw worked as she set her teeth. The calm before a storm. After a brief pause, Fixer snapped something in french Deacon couldn’t follow. Something about.... _erreur_... error. An error. 

The old woman smiled. “ _Oui_ ,” she said with a nod, unperturbed by a bristling Fixer.

“What about Shaun? You promised," Fixer continued. In English.   
  
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to him. That he’s exactly the same. When you’re ready.”  Something strange passed between them then, and the old, angry thing made a break from his stomach, rearing up to boil in his chest.

_Wait… wait…_

The woman lifted her hand as if to touch Fixer’s cheek, and Fixer jerked away, standing abruptly as the door shuddered under another blow. “Don’t,” she spat out, jutting her jaw, rage and disgust spotting off her in near-visible sparks. “ _Ne me touche pas._ J amais _.”_

The old woman’s face fell a little. Her lips pressed together, the light of her sharp, calculating eyes turning inward.

“Fix,” Deacon said. “I’d love to stay and chat with your new pal, but we’ve got about forty-five seconds to get out of here.”

“I assume you’ve got a way to do that.” She looked between Deacon and the woman like she wasn't sure who to focus on. Like she wasn't sure which was a bigger threat. Hackles up. 

“There’s a pip-boy in my bag, it’s got a fancy new feature you’re gonna love. Zap us both outta here.” Possibly untrue that they’d both get out, but there’d been no time to test if two people could use the teleporter. Better her than him.

Her eye lit with understanding and she backed towards him. Deacon slung the bag to his front with his free hand as Fixer reached him. She looked up at him for a moment, and he thought maybe it wasn’t wishful thinking that the look contained the flicker of a smile, but then she tore through the bag and pulled out the pip-boy, snapping it onto her wrist.  

And then the door slid open.

“Coordinates are in already,” he said as she scrambled at the controls. Cover… there was no cover. He crowded into her space prepared to push her down if the guards came through with guns blazing. Instead, a tall man in a courser coat stood framed in the doorway, his pistol aimed at Deacon’s head as Deacon's laser rifle did the same in kind to him.

“Stand down--”

The woman stood from her chair and took a few steps forward, her back rounded, steps shakey. “Let them go, X6,” she said.

“But ma’am, this intruder--”

“A new experiment. Do you trust me?”

“You have never given me reason to doubt you, ma’am. But not to pursue a--”

“Enough, X6-88!” The old woman’s voice cracked over his protests, making the non-existent hair on the back of Deacon’s neck rise.

“Fixer?” said Deacon, a note of panic rising along with his goosebumps as he watched the exchange, acutely aware that she still fumbled with the pip-boy.

“Got it!” she barked. An instant later she threw herself at him, arms latching around his waist. He stumbled backwards, twisting them so his back was between her and the Courser’s still-cocked gun, finally lowering his. The tell-tale electric tingle tickled in his bones as he crushed Fixer to his chest, and he caught a chemical-clean scent that puzzled him for a moment until he realized it was _h_ _er_. Not the earthy warmth she usually exuded. Her essence maksed by antiseptic soap that burned his nose.

Time slowed as if he’d just huffed a heroic dose of Jet. As the feeling of electricity turned from a tickle to a crackle Deacon caught movement at the corner of his eye; the old woman shuffled around to look at them, outside of his and Fixer’s suspended fall. Her eyes transfixed. Her expression satisfied. Almost  _proud._

And for the second time in as many hours, the world shifted blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay they are REUNITED. I can hardly believe it. I would have liked to have spent less time in the Institute and on all that separation/imprisonment angst but there was a lot of plot and feelings to explore. Next chapter has good things in it, I promise. Things like hurt/comfort, and some catharsis, bonding, being badass as a coping mechanism, and Deacon just being SO HAPPY he's got Fixer back even if everything else sort of sucks. That is assuming, of course, that they survive the teleport. I haven't written the next chapter yet, so WHO KNOWS WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN? Me. I do. Sort of. Fix and Dee tend to have minds of their own and I just follow along, cleaning up their messes. 
> 
> Quick warning for those who need/want it: There's going to be a lot of existential/identity issues and some suicidal ideation moving forward, but nothing gratuitous or wank-y. At least that's not my intent when going through the process of Jeanne... processing her new identity. I'll put the appropriate warnings at the top of chapters. As always, let me know if you find anything that needs a content warning or you have a request. 
> 
> Seriously, thank you all so much for sticking through that angst-fest. I found an old snippet of what follows this chapter that I'd written ages ago and it was amazing how much has changed. A a lot of that change has to do with you, dear readers. I really love the feedback and being able to see how much this story has changed has been a trip. 
> 
> And as if I haven't rambled enough....Update on updates! After this? Slow. Big life things on several fronts: career moves, new relationship (oooo i got a sweetie now *swoon*), and health issues. Lots of adjustment and time spent (resentfully in some cases) not writing. Aiming for once a month, give or take a week.


	30. Rabbit Safe and Sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated since _March_?? Jeeze. I am _so sorry_ for the long wait for this chapter. My life turned upside-down a few months ago, for good reasons and bad. -- family issues, changing jobs, chronic illness, etc. It's been a time, lemme tell you. I've re-written this chapter multiple times since May and it hasn't felt right until recently. I've ended the chapter sooner that I would have liked but I wanted to get it posted, and it felt like a good place to stop. Updates are still going to be sporadic, but I hope to get back to working on Trick a bit more instead of noodling with low-pressure fics that I've been spending time on. Missed these weirdos.  <3

Matter existed again with a crackle and pop like the sound of decrepit speakers. The noise reverberated into a dull whine as if inside a giant bell, muffling other noises. The world fuzzed with blue-white light. Her eyes refused  to focus.

 _“Jeanne?”_ A voice from far away. Or perhaps she was listening from underwater.

Who was Jeanne?

Oh.

_Bad dream._

A sensation. Warmth. It burned, grounding. She had a body. Too hot. Clammy skin shivered in contrast. A hand, pressed against her cheek.

Deacon.

“Fixer,” she rasped, correcting himself.

“Fixer,” he said. He took a shaky breath. “Fix.” he said her name again. She heard a smile in his voice, didn’t have to see it to know it was forced.“Think we mixed up a kidney or two during the teleport?”

She stifled a laugh. Or maybe a sob. Took a shaky breath of her own. “I don’t think so,” she said. She paused for a moment to recall the symptoms of renal failure. Not her own knowledge. Nothing more than a textbook implanted into her brain. Someone else's knowledge. “The seizures would have started by now.”

Deacon made a thoughtful noise against her temple. “Yep,” he said. “That’s Fixer alright.”

Paranoia stabbed through her. _Did he know she wasn’t real?_

She took a deep breath. Didn’t matter right now. She was free. For now. The wasteland smells enveloped her her then, burning her nose in stark contrast to the Institute’s sterility. The peculiar scent of rust and radiation dust and warm pavement after rain, of petrichor. Not unpleasant. And Deacon. Pleasant.

She breathed deeper, her face buried in his chest, arms locked around his ribs as if she held on tight enough she wouldn’t slip through his arms like smoke, evaporate in a crackle of blue electricity and static. He clung to her still, a deathgrip around her shoulders, his heart thudding against her cheek. For a fleeting moment, it felt like there was nothing else in the world but their bone-crushing hug.   

Beyond the sounds of Deacon’s heart against her ear and the tandem of their ragged breathing, other sounds encroached. The far off drone of giant insects. Bloodbug, she thought absently. Not close enough to be a danger, high pitched on the edge of her hearing. The creak of ancient trees, the breeze hissing through leaves and grass. The absent, gentle peal of a bell--it sounded like a church bell--untethered from its pulley.

She felt the brush of his lips across her temple. The sensation sent a shock through her, reminding her that the body she felt was _her_ body. Her skin crawled and she shuddered, biting back back at a second, revulsive surge of paranoia.

_Did he know?_

She let go of him, stumbling back as if she’d found herself hugging a hot iron.

They stared at each other, both breathing hard, and Fixer’s fists clenched. Deacon’s face was blank, just shadow and the glinting pits of his glasses. He wore an institute jumpsuit. And his glasses. No wig. He looked unreadable and dangerous. He looked like a stranger.

They needed cover. Out in the open, still in danger of pursuit by X6 and the SRBno time to ask if Deacon had done what he did best. If he’d lied to her. If he knew what she had been all along.

“Where are we?”  

His answer was prompt, mirroring her efficiency. “East of Sunshine Tidings.”

“Do you have a plan?”

He nodded. “Go underground. There’s a bunker. You know the little chapel, just up the hill?”

“I know it. After that?”

“I’m sort of flyin’ by the seat of my Institute jammies here. I was thinking that’d be up to you.”

Fixer gathered herself, feeling exposed in her thin Institute pajamas and rubber-soled slippers, flimsy enough that already she felt twigs and stones beneath her feet. She’d run across the chapel when heading south from Abernathy on Minutemen business. Months ago now. It seemed like a dream.

A gun lay at Deacon’s feet. “Give that to me,” she said, pointing to it.

She felt his eyes on her, but he obeyed, scooping up the laser pistol and handing it over. The grip felt heavy and reassuring in her hand. “Let’s move,” she said.

“Seeing as we’ve got all our limbs and respective organs in place… Agreed.”

Together they stumbled up the hill to the chapel. The sound of the bell grew closer. What was with the Railroad and churches? Their sacred mission to protect synths, perhaps. Deacon and Glory. Drummer Boy.

They crossed the threshold of the church as the names of each agent went flashing through her mind like a strobe, flooding her with panic. She stifled another laugh-sob. Had they used her? Like she was a puppet? Glory would never… She would have said something. If she’d known. Glory hated even killing Gen 1s. Drummer was too far compartmentalized to know anything. Besides, he was terrible at poker. And Deacon was her partner.

Inside, the hollow space echoed with their footsteps. The church lay quiet under two centuries of dust, broken pews and a pulpit leaning at a crazed angles. Deacon stopped at one of the broken pews. She stood buzzing and burning, watching him as he shoved it aside with a grunt. She didn’t know what to do with her hands except hold the gun more tightly. Useless. Saint had never been useless. Fixer wasn’t useless.

Deacon squatted and pulled on what she realized was a handle, and a square of the bone-dry wood floor lifted to a dark yawn of nothing.

She sucked on the inside of her cheek, biting down till it hurt. Let go just before her teeth could draw blood. “Where are we going?”

Deacon’s glasses lingered on her for a fraction of a second too long, and then he lowered himself down into the hole. There must be a ladder, because he paused, forearms resting on the floor, and looked up at her. “The bunker. Lets out south of here.” His head cocked to the side. “You’re not gonna disappear on me now, are you?”

Fixer straightened up, shaking the cold dread from her shoulders at the sight of the trap door leading underground. Again. She shook her head slowly. Took a step forward. She should say something pithy, but nothing came to mind. Deacon smiled at her, warm and sad.

“You know what? Don’t answer that. Let’s make like molerats and… uh. Dig it.”

She managed a chuckle at his expectant grin, though the laugh disappeared as Deacon did, swallowed by the trap door’s shadow.

Nowhere to go but down. She followed on numb feet, dropping down until she found the ladder and tugging the trap door shut behind her. The dull thud sounded final as it closed. Rung by rung she lowered herself into darkness. At the bottom of the ladder, low gloom intruded. There, Deacon waited, scanning the room warily. Fixer’s feet hit the floor and cold seeped through the thin soles of her slippers.

Nothing moved. held the laser pistol held at the half-ready, though there was nothing to aim at.

The room was empty. Just an old bunker, with a metal door and some old crates scattered along the wall, detritus strewn over the floor. The ordinary disorder of the room settled over her like a heavy blanket, comforting.

Safe as they were going to get, for now. The question she’d been burning to ask him since he’d burst into her prison room bubbled up unbidden--

“Did you know?” Her voice shook, her throat almost too tight to force out the words.

A beat. His eyebrows drew down. “Know?”

“Deacon,” she said, the bite she put to his name so sharp she could feel it cut between them as he took a half step back. Her jaw set. “Did you _know?_ ”

A thought: _If he did know, he’s betrayed you. If he didn’t know, he’s failed you._

And another: _That’s not fair._

“Fix… did I know what? That they were gonna go all mad science on you? No, I didn’t--” His sunglasses stared back at her, a double negative. Negating his no.

She cut over him. “No. Did you know…” She couldn’t remember if she’d yet uttered the word. Called herself what she was. _Coward. You can’t even say it out loud_.

Deacon shook his head, back and forth, and his hands went painfully tight on her shoulders. He made a choked sound. Cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to answer that when I don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “I can't remember if I told you, but I'm not a mind reader--”

She closed the distance between them, looking up into his eyes, staring at herself in his lenses.  The gun felt twice its actual weight in her numb fingers. “Let me see your eyes.”

Those sunglasses stared at her for a long moment that stretched between them like a chasm. Then he nodded.

_Okay._

She reached up, and he flinched. She paused, took a deep breath and pulled off the glasses.

His eyes never failed to startle her. Old soul eyes. Crow’s feet at the corners, right now tight with worry. More tight with worry than usual. Irises more gray than blue in the dark. His face solidified, deep circles under his eyebrows drawn down in confusion. His expression soft and exhausted. She didn’t understand his expression. Couldn’t give a name to the look.

She exhaled through her nose, fighting the lump in her throat. “Before I went in there. Did you know what I was?” Her hand dropped, fingers curling around the metal arm of his glasses. His eyes went wide, and he exhaled in a soft _oh_ of understanding. No more stonewalling or pretense or probing.

“I never,” he said, jaw set and trembling. “Jeanne…” The sound of that name made her flinch. He huffed, frowning, and corrected himself. “Fixer. Fix. No… I _never--_ ” The word tore from his chest, hard with conviction. The way he sounded when they were about to argue methods and work. Secret agent bullshit. The conviction he’d brought to bear on himself, his own judge and jury, that night he’d told her about Barbara. How he was too much of a coward to save her.

Then he softened.  “I _never_ would have sent you there. If I knew what they’d done. Were going to do. I’m so--” His voice broke. “I’m so… sorry.”

It was enough. She was sorry too. Mistakes. Assumptions.

Her body re-discovered gravity, folding to the ground. After a moment, after what felt like an hour, she found herself cradled in Deacon’s lap, his hand, shaking, curled into her hair, running his fingers through it again and again. He hugged her, rocking. Whispered soothing nonsense. _I got you,_ he murmured. _You’re safe. I got you. Nothing’s gonna hurt you now. Nothing. I got you._

Not the hugging type. Biggest lie.

Neither of them moved. She was afraid she might dematerialize if she let go. His grip on her hand was almost painful. Full of fear. He's been worried. Must have been. Couldn't let go. She’d end up back in the Institute. Or some in-between space. Trapped in teleport limbo. Trapped in Kellogg’s brain, back in the Memory Den. Trapped as the seed of a project, a gleam in Sophie Deckard’s eye.

_You are so convincing in your role. A walking, talking meat puppet, programed to believe you were a real girl, with a will of your own._

_You aren’t sure you can take this kind of heartache. But Sophie can. Saint always could. You trust her strength. She is stronger than you._

Saint… Sophie. Jeanne.

No. Fixer.

The warm familiarity of his body, his voice reverberating against her cheek, flooded her with a feeling she didn’t try to name. It felt so _new._ And old. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, trying not to choke on the growing horror that finally threatened to swallow her whole.

“I’m not real,” she whispered, leaning into him.

Deacon huffed, pressing his lips to the top of her head. He knew, now. She hadn’t been able say it, but she didn’t have to.

“ _You’re real,_ ” he murmured. His breath against her ear made her shiver, beating back the horror. She loosened her grip on his sunglasses, the metal arm cutting into her palm. Ridiculous things.

“You’re here and you’re real, right here.” He murmured. He stroked her hair, tucked a lock behind her ear. “Right here. You’re real. The realest person I ever met.”

He drew back a little, stooped down to catch her eyes. “Remember the new sign?” he asked her. She searched his face a moment. His eyes, startling again. Old-soul eyes. He didn’t look sad. Or disappointed. Or concerned. Or frightened. He was smiling.

“Rabbit underground?” she whispered.

He nodded, his smile growing. He drew his thumb along her cheek to swipe at the tear tracks. “Rabbit safe and sound.”

Their lips brushed, the hitch of his breath like a little promise. The first kiss fell gently. The next, harder. She swallowed a little moan, tongue tasting his mouth, warm, wet. Human. God, she wanted more…

He pulled away, breathing hard, shaking his head. “Aw, Fix, we gotta--”

“I missed you,” she whispered.

He blinked slowly, she could almost feel his eyelashes on her cheek. “I was getting ready to miss you forever,” he murmured, his voice soft. Sincere as he'd ever sounded.

She choked back a laugh. Maybe a sob. Maybe a little hysterical. _You’re here and you’re real, right here. You’re real. The realest person I ever met._

She wanted to stay there forever, huddled with Deacon on the dirty floor of some ancient bunker. But the SRB would be on them if they didn’t move. Deacon evidently felt the same as they sifted. They helped each other to their feet, and Deacon squeezed her hand and let go gently. She leaned away and handed him his glasses. He took them and smiled down at her as he slid them on.

He cleared his throat. “So… I gotta ask. Who was the old woman?”

She’d expected the question. “I thought you would have figured it out already,” she murmured, scooping up the discarded gun.

Deacon shrugged. “I’ve been pretty focused on the moment-to-moment,” he said. “Made too many assumptions.”

“Sophie Deckard.” The name was easier to say than she thought it might be.

Deacon nodded, and Fixer saw the realization flicker across his face, like he was running probabilities, playing the numbers, until he came to the most likely conclusion. He didn’t press.

“So...Where to?”

Fixer frowned, gazing down at the ground. “I need clothes,” she said.

“In the works,” he said. She didn’t ask what he meant. He was apparently taking care of the details. It was her job to decide where to go. Settlements would be too vulnerable, and put innocent people at risk. Diamond city was under Institute control, and there was nothing there for her anyway. Except… The realization struck her like a flashbang.

“Nick Valentine,” she sputtered. “The only person in the Commonwealth who can understand what I’m… I need to see him. And Amari. We’ll go to Goodneighbor. Hancock will give us some protection. Get Nick to meet us there.”

“I’ll put a note in a dead drop for someone to get him. Don’t fancy a stop in Diamond City.”  
  
“It’s second on the list of places I don’t want to be in the moment.”

An awkward silence fell between them. Deacon took a breath, his spine straightening as if he wanted to say something, but something bangled against the door on the far wall, and they both spun to face it. Jeanne raised her pistol, stepping in the forward position. Behind her, Deacon pulled a shock batton from his belt.

Another clang against the door. Someone cursed softly. Deacon took a step forward. Fixer rooted herself to the spot. Gun at the ready, she felt right again. Something real to fight.

Deacon cleared his throat. “Do you have a geiger counter?” he called.

The response was immediate. “It’s in the fucking shop! _God_.”

“Nope, just Deacon. But I can see how you’d make that mistake.” He shoved open the door, it’s rusty hinges squealing in protest.

Glory stood framed in the doorway like some sort of avenging Fury of myth, all scowls flashing eyes, blood splattered on her coat, the brightest thing in the word, brighter than her silver hair. Minigun at the ready, she glared at Deacon with more than annoyance. Didn’t seem to notice Fixer.

“Want to tell me what the hell your game is, Deacon? I busted ass to--”

Fixer’s feet came unrooted and she stumbled forward, relief flooding her shocked system.  “Glory? _Tabarnak..._ ”

“Fixer? Holy shit...” Glory lowered her gun, the six-eyed barrel pointing upward. Her whipcord frame made it seem impossible for her to hold such a weapon with such ease. But Glory was a synth. She could do… anything. “You’re back.” Fixer took another step forward, her heart thudding hard against her ribs, rising to her throat.   _I’m like you. We are the same…_ Glory reached out her hand and Fixer gripped her forearm. Their fingers squeezed hard against each other’s arms for a moment, eyes locking. _I’m like you,_ she wanted to say _._

“I’m back.” Fixer said instead, feeling stupid. She let go of Glory’s arm, unsure now what to do with her hands. “What are you doing here?”

Glory glanced at Deacon. He fiddled with the rubbery hem of his Institute jumpsuit, looking smug.

“ _Deacon_ here--” she jerked her chin at him-- “left me a note. In code. Sent me out here into the boonies, hauling this bag of _whatever_ like I’m a fucking pack-mule.’” Glory shrugged, freeing herself of the duffle bag slung over her shoulder. She tossed it to Deacon.

He barely caught it, staggering backwards with a grunt. “ _Ooof_. You did a great--”

“ _And then_ \--” Glory cut over him-- “I wade into this nest of raiders, thinking this is some package run, and I gotta kill these assholes by myself? And I find _you two.”_

Deacon’s smirk spread into a grin. “Thought you liked working alone.”

“You and your compartmentalization bullshit--” Glory’s eyes froze on Fixer and her words trailed away.

Fixer immediately dropped her arms, realizing she’d been hugging herself with her free arm, rocking slightly on her heels. Cold seeped through her slippers from the metal floor. The Institute pajamas felt too thin, one step away from being naked. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into the meat of her palm, the other hand squeezing the gun at her side. Embracing the sharp little bite of pain to keep her from falling back into the half-fuge she’d been trapped in since the teleport.

Glory took a step forward. “What’s wrong?” She set the minigun aside, her eyes not leaving Fixer’s face.

Fixer shook her head. “Later,” she muttered. _Like Glory. I’m the same as Glory. That can’t be so bad. Not so bad._

Glory’s eyes scanned her from head to toe. Like she was preparing for battlefield triage. The air down here was flat and stale, and though it was not cold, goosebumps rose along her arms. Beside her, Deacon shifted, sliding the big duffle bag across the floor towards her feet. For the first time, Fixer noticed her old rifle strapped to the side.

“Gray and white were never your colors, Fix,” he said. “There’s some peak Wastelander camo in here, if you’d like a costume change.” He stripped as he spoke, pulling on a dingy t-shirt and jeans he’d already taken from the bag. He dressed in record time, hardly enough to register the flash of pale skin of his stomach, or bare shoulders.

Fixer looked away as he buttoned up a rust-brown plaid shirt. She always liked that shirt on him. Made him look approachable. She knelt, and opened the bag. Inside were a mix of clothes and gear, her medkit and toolkit. A bag full of comfort. Costume change. Put on a role. She wasn’t an Institute experiment. She was Fixer. And she needed some clothes to prove it. Be who she needed to be in order to survive.

Just like Deacon did.

Beneath the clothes, she felt something familiar. The feel of leather, butter soft with a thin film of road-grime. Soft, reassuring. Safe. Sent a jolt of reality through her, burning away the numb horror. Her duster. And nestled in the heart of the coat, Deliverer. When she looked up from the bundle in her hands, it was to find Deacon watching her with a small smile.

She tilted her head at him, an unspoken question, and he shrugged. “No big deal.”

Except these things must have come from the Institute before she’d escaped. Sophie Deckard. Must have been her. Between Sophie and Deacon, they’d think of everything.

“Hey Glory,” said Deacon. “Why don’t we go scout the rest of this dungeon?”

Glory evidently missed his pointed tone. “I’ve already cleared it--”

“Better safe than dead.” His words fell deliberately, eyebrows rising at their fellow agent.

Glory huffed and hoisted her minigun again, casting a cautious glance at Fixer. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing.”

Deacon hearded Glory towards the door. “Seeing is believing, my friend,” he said. He glanced back over his shoulder at Fixer. “Be back in five. Then we’ll head to Goodneighbor. Go to ground. Have a spa day. Sound good?”

“Whatever,” Glory growled, annoyance threading through her words like thorns. The door clanged shut behind them, voices growing muffled.

Privacy. A few moments alone to change into her familiar gear. Collect herself. After days...perhaps weeks of being trapped like an insect under glass, the consideration Deacon kept treating her with was baffling. Like nothing had changed.

Fixer stripped off her gray and white pajamas, shuddering. She looked down at them for a moment, then balled the fabric and tossed it aside. Let them stay there and rot with the rest of the ancient garbage.

She changed more slowly than Deacon had. A faded t-shirt and patched jeans, an old sweatshirt. Boots that approximated her size, and socks. She pulled on her duster one sleeve at a time and it folded around her like an embrace. The rifle she strapped to her back felt like a pillar of support. She stared at Deliverer for a long moment. The initials scratched into the gunmetal.

The only thing strange about her now was the way her skin felt. Scrubbed clean, hair shiny. Artificial, after months of nuclear grime and campside bird-baths and irradiated swims. She glanced towards the ladder, ten feet away. She could go back through that trap door. Disappear. Go back home. To Quebec. See what had become of it. Find Xavier, if he was still alive. Give her a new quest. It was either that or Goodneighbor. Neither seemed appealing.

She swallowed, tearing her eyes from the initials on the gun. Dropped Deliverer onto the top of the now empty bag. It didn’t belong to her anymore. It belonged to the Railroad, and whoever came after her. Eyes darting, she backed towards the ladder. Turned and wrapped her fingers around a rusted metal rung, stinging cold. She had a five minute head start. Deacon would try to find her. But Saint had been good at running. Sophie Deckard was good at hiding.

And then the muffled sound of gunfire ripped through the air. She jumped, letting go of the ladder. Another rapid report and a shout. All thoughts of the ladder, of running, vanished. Fixer flung herself towards Deliverer, snatched it up.

She raised the gun. Such a little thing, impossibly light, impossibly silent. She heard another shout, and the roar of Glory’s minigun. Glory would be indignant that she hadn’t managed to clear the bunker. And Deacon would be painfully smug.

Fixer flexed her hand, resting her index finger along trigger guard, and kicked open the door.

 

~~~

 

The raiders were easy. The next steps were harder. Fixer watched Glory. Deacon watched Fixer. And Glory watched them both. Emerging from the bunker, and in the hours that followed, they all watched for Coursers. None came. That was the hardest part. No one coming after them was more frightening than half a dozen Coursers, as Glory was quick to point out. But Fixer had a theory she wasn't sharing just yet. She could only assume Sophie Deckard was responsible.  

It was an overnight walk to Boston proper. Deacon orbited them like a satellite, scouting ahead, only to return, and then fall back to cover their trail. Glory stuck to Fixer’s side like a burr. When Deacon was near, he talked. Made jokes. Observed the surrounding and the weather with blithe irreverence. Taunted their enemies. When it was Fixer and Glory, there was silence. Fixer wasn’t sure which she needed more.

Glory had chosen her life. Broken free, chose to keep her own identity, her own memories of the Institute and her subsequent freedom. What had been her words? _Ass kicking poster of a liberated synth._

“Did you find your son?” Glory said as they slid through the early morning, heading south-east past yet another raider encampment. Her voice was like the snap of a twig.

Caught staring, Fixer looked away. She didn’t answer, just kept putting one foot in front of the other on the pitted dirt track. She still couldn’t find the words she needed to say. “Yes,” she said instead. “And no.”

They walked shoulder to shoulder now. “So what happened?”

Fixer shrugged. “I got some answers. I know now I don’t have a son. I never had.”

“So it was pointless, getting yourself in there? After all that. Nothing?”

Heart high in her throat, she cleared it. “I’m a synth.”

Glory missed a step.

Fixer halted and turned, realizing Glory had stopped walking. Glory’s face was unguarded, eyes wide. Then she grinned and barked a laugh.

Fixer swelled with indignation. She hadn’t meant to say it. But now she had, she’d hoped Glory would be understanding. Not… _laugh_ at her. “You don’t believe me? I’ve been through hell and back, lost _everything_ \--”

Glory shook her head, sobering slightly. But there was a glint in her eyes she could not disguise.  “No, no. It’s always a shock to find out. I’m sorry. But it makes sense.” Her grin returned. “You’re way too badass to be human.” She resumed walking, clapping Fixer on the shoulder as she strode past. “Welcome to the family.”

Fixer felt as if she’d missed several steps herself. Glory’s blithe acceptance left her stunned, and she hurried to catch up.

“That’s it?” she said, almost accusing, as they fell back in stride.

“What more is there to say?”

“My whole world is upside down noq. Everything I am belongs to another person. Nothing--”

“No,” Glory cut over her. “It’s everything. That the person who’s taking on the Institute, making waves in the Railroad? That’s huge. That’s _you_.”

The words tumbled out now, like her admission had unstoppered a bottle, trying to get Glory to understand. It wasn’t so simple. “I remember before the war. I remember years of a life I never lived, horrible things, amazing things. None of it belongs to me. I’m not my name or personality, my memories--My family...”

“That’s how it is.” Glory’s curt dismissal stung. “Synths who replaced humans remember lives that aren’t theirs. Maybe those lives _became_ theirs. Depends on how you look at it. You get to chose.” Glory smiled lazily at her, her expression mild, brown eyes full conviction. She and Deacon weren’t so different, Fixer realized. “Besides, there’s another synty out there who remembers a pre-war life that he never lived.”

Fixer frowned. Were there others she didn’t know about? Her neighbors, dead in their pods? Xavier? Nate… No. Sophie would have said. Nate was dead. So who…

The sudden realization made Fixer smack her palm against her forehead. She wasn't alone in this. There was someone else, someone who’d been there for her since almost the beginning. She huffed, shaking her head in wonder at her own thick-headedness and at the bubble of hope Glory had started in her chest. She fumbled in one of her pockets for the little notepad and the stub of pencil she always kept there, and scrawled a note in Railroad cipher. Maybe he’d come to Goodneighbor...

Glory simply smiled as they moved on, now quiet. After a few yards, Glory spoke again. “Does Deacon know?”

“Yes.”

“‘Course he does.” Glory’s expression darkerend. “I swear to god if he knew before he sent you into that hellhole, I’ll kill him.”

“He didn’t,” Fixer said quickly. Glory raised an eyebrow. “He _didn’t_ know.” Thoughts of Barbara came unbidden to her mind and she shoved them aside. No time to be lovesick or scared of how Deacon might be feeling about her… situation.

“Good. If I ever find out he did, I’ll kill him.” Glory took a deep breath and shook herself, scanning the landscape of brown-green hills and broken asphalt bathed in a pale gold sunrise. She was smiling.

Fixer didn’t say anything, just kept walking. And when Deacon returned from his rearward scouting and track-covering, Glory smiled at him too. Deacon looked from her to Fixer and back with a raised eyebrow. Fixer sighed, letting the tension go from her shoulders.

“It’s the three of us, now,” she said to both of them. “Don’t tell anyone unless I give you the permission.”

Deacon made a little _ah_ of understanding and Glory smirked at him. When she looked back at Fixer her expression sobered. “Not my thing to tell,” she murmured. Glory twitched, as if she wanted to reach out and grasp Fixer’s shoulder again but then thought better of it.

“You know me, Fix,” Deacon said arily, still looking between them. “I love a good secret.”

“Where’s the closest dead-drop?” Fixer asked him, waving the scrap of paper vaguely.

“Change of plans?” he asked.

“No. We'll still go to Goodneighbor. But I need to see Nick Valentine.”

Deacon nodded and took the paper. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. He hesitated a moment and let his fingers brushed her hand. She took them and squeezed briefly, and then he was gone again.   
  
Glory now watched them openly, still smiling.


End file.
